The Indian think-tank National Institution for Transforming India, (NITI Aayog), an initiative by the Indian government has played a phenomenal role in advancing emerging technologies in India and putting in a roadmap for AI.  Analytics India Magazine got in touch with the head of data analytics cell at NITI Aayog, Avik Sarkar, who uses smart data and advanced analytics technologies to help government, citizens and clients improve outcomes and optimise processes. With core strengths in analytics, statistics, machine learning & data mining, he is working across various industries to bring the best out of them. He shares his thoughts on big data agenda in policy making, enabling centralised data storage, and more.

Analytics India Magazine: What does your role at NITI Aayog involve?

Avik Sarkar: While government consists of several ministries and each ministry have their own divisions and pockets on analysing data, I head the analytics cell of NITI Aayog. We take a lot of data from outside, analyse it and try to make sense of it for economic good. That is our primary goal. There are different verticals such as healthcare, education, energy, science and technology, on which we are working based on the data requirements. We see what kind of visualisation can be done on this data that adds value. It is more of an internal role trying to fill out the data analytics gap in the organisation.

AIM: What are the different data sources?

AS: It can be raw data coming from states or districts, survey responses, survey estimates, and more. If you are looking at the status of healthcare of the whole country, you can look at hospital records which gives you a snapshot of all the patient-related data. If you have to look at the health of children of certain age group, we go into surveys by going to houses and take samples from there. We take a measurement of people and report back while conducting root cause analysis.

AIM: How is NITI Aayog pushing the big data agenda in policy making?

AS: Big data can mean different things to different people. When we talk about operational data, it has been captured over years and is being used for policy making. We try to look at big data to see how the formal and informal employment sector works, such as how many chartered accountants are coming out each year and how many jobs they are generating. On similar lines, we try to look at retail data and try to understand how the economy is moving on several fronts. We also have an aspirational district program where we have a dashboard for monitoring the data on the developing indicators in these districts in real time. The district collectors are filling up this data which is uploaded in real time in champions.change.org and then we look into that data to check performance. Some can be sectorial viewing of districts; some can be about jobs in a sector for the economy. It depends on the type of activity and we employ different methodologies for that.

AIM: Would you talk about areas where NITI Aayog is shaping policymaking in digital payments, healthcare or agriculture?

AS: Particularly nutrition is a big area here. National Nutrition Mission which is done in collaboration with the Ministry of Health, Ministry of Child and Women Healthcare Development. And, NITI Aayog also has a technical evaluation for the National Nutrition Mission. We are monitoring how the program is running by evaluating the output. Our other key focus areas are agriculture, healthcare and education. These are the strategically important areas from a social perspective. We look at a lot of satellite imagery and AI-based technologies to improve the agricultural yield.

AIM: Would like to talk about your work in energy vertical. Energy sector modelling, energy data management?

AS: This started in 2016. Healthcare and education data analysis are short-term in nature, which might take 1-5 years. But in case of energy, we are looking at the future horizon, say 20-30 years. New energy generation plants are coming up and we do energy forecasting for the future of supply and demand. We have to be very strategic in nature. For instance, when we import oil, whether the oil price will increase in the future or not, needs energy forecasting. This decision can impact whether the government recommends the move towards electric vehicles. While we have a surplus of electricity from wind and solar energy, we say there will be electric vehicles 10 years from now—this is a strategic move. It will take some time for these things to percolate in an economy. The industry will take some time to grow. The industry will take some time to grow. The competition will evolve and more cars will start to appear in the electric vehicle domain. The policy needs the industry to grow. Infrastructural changes need private players to participate and things like this take time.

AIM: How are you strengthening centralised data storage?

AS: We have a project for that, which is the National Data Analytics portal. There is a lot of data being put by ministries on their own websites. We do not have a central repository for all this data. So, with this portal, we can have all this data accumulated on a central portal which will be accessible to all the people across different sectors. This can be used for policymaking.

AIM: There was news that NITI Aayog is looking to hire more people. Are these positions related to AI, Data Science?

AS: It is divided into verticals such as subject matter experts on healthcare, education, agriculture etc., where most of the hiring happens. Data analytics and IT are more horizontal roles.

AIM: Would like to talk about technology stack at NITI Aayog? What are the tools that you use in Analytics?

AS: We internally use tools like Excel and other proprietary tools for charting and mathematical analysis. We have large computer infrastructure and tie-ups with institutions such as IIT Delhi for its supercomputing facility.

AIM: What are the challenges that you see in the space?

AS: We aim to use data for economic growth and innovating various activities in the domain. One of the challenges for the government is how to get access to this private data. There are retail chains which are using it for customer analytics. If we can combine this data and form a consortium, then it can be used to analyse retail trends across the whole country. This will not hamper any competition but will help policymakers in understanding how the consumption in certain areas. Also, we can look at telecom data from telecom players and other data which is lying in the domain to be analysed. We need more real-time data either from the government or corporate and make sense of the data for social good.

Another challenge is about educating people about what data can do for you.  Once they are educated, they will start asking the right questions and go beyond counting and reporting aggregate numbers.

The post Niti Aayog’s Next Mission Is To Use Data To Transform Nutrition In India, Says Avik Sarkar, Analytics Head appeared first on Analytics India Magazine.

Being a data scientist with one of the leading private banks in India can be a challenging job, especially when the competition is stiff as competitors are trying to woo more customers each day.

For this week’s ‘Day In The Life Of’ series, we caught up with Anisha Gulati, a young data scientist professional at Yes Bank. Gulati spoke to us about her life outside the professional circle, how she unwinds and most importantly, the best part about the job that keeps her motivated to be at the office dot on time each day.

Unlike other data scientists, Gulati is also very socially active, just like any other youth these days and balances her work and social life quite efficiently. As much as she is driven to better herself in her work, Gulati belongs to the generation which believes in not restricting oneself to the four walls of their offices. So, if you happen to see her at an open mic during the weekend, reciting an evocative poem, don’t be surprised, as this data scientist can juggle it all.

For Gulati, a working day begins at eight in the morning, and before heading to the office each day, she makes it a point to catch up with her parents and then take her dog for a quick stroll. Her work hour as stretches from 9.30 am to 6.30 pm and depending on the deliverables and work priority, it could extend a bit more.

However, during office hours, the work-mode in on and she has to deal with a large pool of data on a daily basis. As a data analyst at Yes Bank, her work primarily is to conceptualise problems that could arise and then find a solution to it. “My work primarily is to conceptualise the problem and create an end-to-end solution with the help of my team. Ideating the business problem, finalising the approach to solve the problem, data understanding and clean up, researching the best algorithm to use, coding the solution, validating the results is what I do,” Gulati says giving us a glimpse into her responsibilities.

Since most weekdays are jam-packed, thanks to work, Gulati reveals she hardly gets any time to pursue her passion during weekdays. Weekends for her is the only respite to just go with the flow, “It gets difficult to pursue hobbies on the weekday, though some days I go for a work out in the morning. However, I pursue poetry and participate in open mic events on weekends,” says Gulati who is also an avid foodie and music-lover.

Asked isf her work could get a little mundane, she is quick to point out that the only thing boring involving her work is to wait for the code to run and display the results. Otherwise, she is all praise for her office and work, “I am learning a lot more at this work and this is the best part. We explore various techniques that can be used to offer a solution. In that process, one gets to learn all possible techniques one can use, and decide on the most optimum one,” says Gulati who prefers to catch up with her colleagues over Friday lunches.

Currently, she is involved in a project to classify the transactions that a customer makes, “This to build a more personalised experience for the customer. Another project that I am involved is to identify the patterns in a customers’ transaction and offer them the next best service or product based on their behaviour,” she adds.

To the question of future her plans, her reply was short and crisp, “Professionally, I want to understand various nuances of data analytics, successfully complete the projects I am working on and see them go live. Personally, I wish to develop my writing skills and increase participation in various literary events,” she concludes.

The post A Day In The Life Of | Part Poet & Part Scientist, This Young Data Analyst Can Juggle It All appeared first on Analytics India Magazine.

In this fast-paced, competitive world, entrepreneurship has become an escape for people from their hectic day job. With a mindset that starting your venture would be more peaceful and easier, people take the path of being founders or co-founders. However, the trust is, being an entrepreneur takes a lot of courage and staying power.

For this week’s “A Day In The Life Of” series, AIM had a colloquy with Dr CSS Bharathy, Founder of Fusion VR. In conversation with Dr Bharathy, he spoke about how he spends his day — from his work life to this social life.

Unlike every other people, Dr Bharathy kick starts his day as soon as he steps into his office in the morning. Being the founder of a company, he makes sure that his team is driven by the force of punctuality.

When asked about his working hours, Dr Bharathy said “My house and office are conveniently in the same building, so I end up spending most of my time in office except small breaks in-between. Generally, I work with my development team during the day.”

As mentioned before, to be an entrepreneur, one has to put in more effort than expected and Dr Bharathy is a great example of it. Unlike his team’s working hours, most work days of Dr Bharathy stretches beyond the conventional office hours, “In fact, I often peacefully sit for 2 to 3 hours after my dinner to do my readings and research, which I cannot do during the office hours.”

“With my 2 decades of overseas and domestic experience, I am always rendering my best to Fusion VR and my team.”

Many people cannot handle the workloads and because of that, they end up not getting proper sleep. But Dr Bharathy doesn’t let it happen in his life; he makes it a point that he never misses his eight hours of sound sleep that gives him energy for the rest of the day.

Talking about his life out of office, he tells us that he is fond of gardening, “During mornings and evenings, along with my family, I spend a reasonable amount of time for our roof-garden organic farm. We have planted nearly 200 vegetable plants on the second floor of the office. We also grow Quails at this roof garden area through which we produce organic compost fertiliser for the plants. There are also volunteers from our office to assist us with the plants.”

Dr Bharathy is not much of an active social media person; however, he is much more active in his real life — whether it’s about the work or about family time. 

“By nature, I can joyfully involve myself in any activity I do. This makes every moment of my day equally the best!”

When asked about whether his work has affected his personal life, he said, “With my home and office being located in the same building, it often gets difficult for me to distinguish between my professional and personal life as my office timings go beyond the conventional office timings.”

As the conversation continued, Dr Bharathy gave us insights about his company, Fusion VR and explained what role he plays in the company.

Dr Bharathy’s  role in the company consists of the following:

• Meeting clients and understanding their requirements
• Designing the correct solution and educating the client on the benefits after implementation along with ROI calculations
• Helping the client in finalising the Scope-of-Work
• Architecting the product in the technical and visual sense
• Interfacing between clients and Fusion VR’s  in-house team
• Testing and QC in terms of physiological and psychological factors
• Ensuring that we “Always Deliver More Than Committed”, which is Fusion VR’s policy
• Guiding R&D and designing Proof of Concepts

Talking about the company’s core strengths, Dr Bharathy told they lie within the spectrum of Interactive Immersive Technologies such as VR, AR and MR focusing on Industry 4.0/Smart Factory solutions.

In the past seven years, the Immersive Simulation projects the company handled are mostly for its overseas Oil and Gas clients along with customers from automobile and other verticals of engineering. Also, Fusion VR is working closely with Indian Defense Research and Development Organisation (DRDO) for their engine modules. IoT-integrated Digital Twins for maintenance and training in the XR space is the latest addition to Fusion VR’s services list.

When asked about his plans for the next 5 years or so, he said, “It’s evident that immersive technologies such as VR and AR pose tremendous benefits to businesses and are going mainstream in the next 5 to 10 years. With our existing expertise at Fusion VR, we would like to develop more intelligence-integrated products with the fusion of IoT and AI technologies in the next five-year roadmap. This way, I believe, we can have more solid space inside the Industry 4.0 environment, which is the future of smart factories!”

The post A Day In The Life Of: Dr CSS Bharathy, A Self-Made AR/VR Entrepreneur appeared first on Analytics India Magazine.

Uniphore saw that 70 percent of the population in India was disconnected from the digital revolution. The founders also realised there was a problem of English literacy also. Uniphore has now become a leader in the speech analytics market. We talked to Samith Ramachandran, VP & Head of Products at Uniphore.

Analytics India Magazine: Tell us about Uniphore and current clients?

Samith Ramachandran: Uniphore Software Systems is a global Conversational AI technology company that builds transformational customer engagement solutions for businesses. Uniphore offers software for Conversational Analytics, Conversational Assistant and Conversational Security. Uniphore has served over 100 enterprise clients and 4 million end users. It has offices worldwide including in USA, Singapore and India. Uniphore was founded in 2008 at IIT Madras, India. The company was recognized as a Technology Fast 500 company in the Asia Pacific by Deloitte in 2014 and ranked 10th in Deloitte’s Fast 50 in 2015. Uniphore’s Co-founder & CEO, Umesh Sachdev, was named in 2016 as one of the ’10 Millennials Changing the World’ by TIME Magazine, and ‘Innovators Under 35′ by MIT Technology Review. Uniphore’s investors include John Chambers, IDG Ventures India, IIFL, Kris Gopalakrishnan, Ray Stata, YourNest Angel Fund and India Angel Network. Uniphore has many marquee clients in India, APAC and US across BFSI, Healthcare, BPO and Hospitality sectors.

AIM: Can you share what’s the roadmap for 2019 for Uniphore and its products?

SR: The primary driver of Customer Experience will be Customer Service and Conversational AI is poised to fundamentally transform customer service. Uniphore and our innovative technology products for conversational AI will drive that transformation. While, we cannot talk about the specifics of product roadmap, at a high level we will be super-charging our flagship product, auMina – the Conversational Analytics Platform with AI, with additional features to deliver both business outcomes and operational efficiency. We are also planning to launch an upgraded version of our versatile, multi-modal and omnichannel conversation assistant solution – AkeiraTM.

AIM: What are the expansion plans going ahead and new updates for our readers?

SR: Last year we established our footprint in the APAC market. We have exceeded our own expectations with key wins from the BFSI sector. This year Uniphore entered the US market and we have already bagged some early major wins. Both regions will continue to be the focus markets for future growth of the company. Our future plans will be to expand our footprint across these markets in terms of Sales, BD, Delivery and R&D.

AIM: What advancements have you achieved in the speech technology?

SR: Our Core Tech R&D team has been working on many areas ranging from Speech/Audio Enhancement to NLU-NLG solutions to the development of Automatic Speech Recognition (ASR) Engine. Just this year we have filed close to 4 to 5 new patents in the aforementioned areas.  

AIM: How has the speech and speech analytics markets changed over the years?

SR: Uniphore has always been the first to anticipate market transitions and align our solutions and strategies accordingly. We pioneered conversational Analytics for Business Outcomes in India and APAC markets about 2 years ago. We have been working with Opus Research for the last 3 years, commissioning a Survey for identifying key trends and customer needs in the conversational Analysis market for different regions. Our findings from these surveys have been that each region has different priorities in terms of drivers for implementing conversational Analytics. While India and APAC markets are still quite excited about applying conversational Analytics to drive Business Outcomes, the West especially the US which is a mature market is looking at Real-time solutions for driving Operational Efficiency and Customer service excellence.  

AIM: How much do you invest in R&D activities in AI and speech processing every year? What are the plans for 2019?

SR: We have always believed in serious investments in building AI and Core Speech tech capacity every year. We are looking at both organic as well as inorganic capacity building aimed at imbibing AI-ML into our R&D DNA and building a strong AI-ML over the early part of next year. From a spend perspective, we are looking at doubling it in 2019.  

AIM: What has been the reaction from your clients over the years to Uniphore product? How much is the demand for speech analytics grown?

SR: Uniphore has always garnered great support and feedback from our clients. We listen to our clients and understand real business problems and provide insights which solve these problems for our clients. The demand for conversational analytics has significantly grown over these years. Uniphore has always been keen in identifying newer application areas for its products Conversational Analytics, Conversational Assistant and Conversational Security. Conversational AI will soon become the core to successful customer engagement for enterprises across verticals. In the last year, we have been able to move conversational Analytics from a peripheral offline analytics solution to a real-time, inline and core conversational analytics platform which will redefine Customer Service of the future!

The post Our Innovative Tech Products For Conversational AI Will Drive Transformation In 2019, Says Samith Ramachandran Of Uniphore appeared first on Analytics India Magazine.

With over 13 years of experience as a decision sciences practitioner with extensive experience in design, development and implementation of data science, Ranajoy Bose, the Solution Engineering Manager – Analytics and Information Management at Oracle Cloud Solutions Hub, has a vast experience in business analytics across various geographies. He spoke to Analytics India Magazine about the bigger role analytics can play in the Indian scenario, cloud computing-based solutions for varied sectors and the joy of working with people who share the spirit of using technology to innovate and solve big problems.

Analytics India Magazine: Tell us about your journey in this sector

Ranajoy Bose: I have around 13 years of experience as a decision sciences practitioner with extensive experience in design, development and implementation of data science, advanced analytics and business intelligence solutions for various industry verticals across multiple geographies. I currently lead the Analytics, Big Data and Data Science platforms out of the Oracle Cloud Solutions and Innovation Hub in Bengaluru, catering to Oracle’s North America Technology Division.

I did my B.Tech in Computer Science and Engineering from the West Bengal University of Technology and then completed my MS in Telecommunications and Software Engineering from BITS, Pilani. I then pursued a one-year work-integrated learning program on Software Project Management from the IIT Delhi and am currently pursuing the Executive Program in General Management from IIM Bangalore.

My areas of expertise include Statistical Modeling, Data Warehousing and Mining, Machine Learning, Business Intelligence, Data Visualisation and Predictive Analytics. I am keenly interested in areas such as Deep Learning, Neural Networks, Cognitive and Adaptive Intelligence. The cognitive science fascinates me a lot and I have carried out a detailed study on how to devise the most effective data visualisation based on a particular situation applying cognitive science methodologies and neural networks. My research paper A Cognitive Study on Data Visualisation was published in the Fourth International Conference on Business Analytics and Intelligence 2016, held in IISc Bangalore.

AIM: Tell us about the engagements and innovations you are carrying out at Oracle Cloud Solutions Hub

RB: The Oracle Cloud Solutions Hub in Bengaluru is in many ways having a spirit of a new startup organisation inside Oracle. The mission of the organisation and this centre is to build and engineer cutting-edge solutions for our customers around cloud computing, big data/analytics and data science, mobile computing, internet of things, the blockchain, cybersecurity etc. Additional trends we are considering to invest in are Artificial Intelligence, Augmented and Virtual Reality and many other exciting technology trends that interest us all. Our mission is simple, we build new and innovative technology solutions for real-world problems that our customers face. And so, we are seeking people who share that spirit of using technology to innovate and solve big problems.

AIM: Can you tell us about some use cases where you used AI, IoT or analytics to solve a real-world problem?

RB: There are a host of such examples and it is really hard for me to choose one. However, a couple of key ones to mention will be the following:

Auto-scaling of Oracle’s Autonomous Data warehouse (ADWC): With the autonomous solutions, Oracle is trying to automate all mundane and administrative tasks that a DBA or IT person has to go through. The goal is to make the data warehouse self-driving, self-securing and self-preparing. With auto-scaling ADWC, we have enabled the business user to literally put their Data Warehouse on autopilot. Moreover, this means their IT division becomes more productive resulting in lowering costs and risks.

Our solution demonstrates how modern Data warehouse should operate in real life business in true elastic nature. Where our customers need to pay exactly what they use. Concisely, the customer has to only create Database tables and upload their data and rest of all the performance optimization will be taken care by our sophisticated machine learning algorithms, which run in the backend and perform all the magic. We developed this feature where our customers only need to pay for resources that they use e.g. number of OCPU per hour and storage in TB. It offers huge cost savings for the customers that observe a spike in their workload in certain times and minimal load otherwise. The true elastic nature of our ML enabled autonomous solution ensures that the no of OCPUs are scaled up to cater to the high load and accomplish the task in lightning speed, and then scale it down as the load decreases.

HVAC Analytics: HVAC (Heating, ventilation, and air conditioning) is the technology to provide thermal comfort and acceptable indoor air quality. Most IoT visualisations presently are geared toward monitoring what’s happening at a specific point in time.  There exists tremendous potential in applying advanced analytics/machine learning on the historic data captured from HVAC. One of our clients had the challenge of not being able to house more than 1 TB of data due to the detrimental impact on performance.  1TB seems like a lot, but not when you’re talking voluminous event data streaming coming from devices like HVAC. We built a connector to easily offload aged IoT data to an Oracle Big Data Cloud (BDC) data lake.  With the Data Lake implementation, we were able to amass the streaming data originated from Oracle’s managed PaaS service (IoT Cloud Service) and transform it into a structured form. This structured data was then used as the source for sophisticated machine learning algorithms to predict system failures using Oracle Analytics Cloud. This kind of solution is competent to prevent the general HVAC problems like clogged air filters, leaking refrigerant, thermostat malfunction etc. Anomalies which are not apprehended in regular maintenance can be detected and can discern something insightful from the enormous amount of data.

We are also working with augmented analytics solutions that are slated to be the future of Analytics by many experts. Additional areas that we are working upon span emerging areas like AR/VR and deep learning to empower our users with the next gen of analytics capabilities.

AIM: What is your biggest challenge in the current role?

RB: The Oracle Cloud Solution Hub in Bengaluru has established itself as a Centre of Excellence of sorts over the span of last 3.5 years catering to the entire portfolio of product offerings by Oracle. It has witnessed a phenomenal growth of more than 5 times in the last couple of years catering to the North America Technology Division. The success of this Hub has provided the confidence to the leadership to start 4 additional Hubs in the US during the last 2 years. The biggest challenge, in my opinion, is to keep up the splendid work and continue to improve ourselves in providing innovative technical solutions to solve our customer’s challenges with the same zeal and efficiency, if not better, in the coming years as well.

AIM: What are your and your team’s greatest strengths?

RB: Our biggest strength is that we have in-depth technical knowledge coupled with a strong understanding of business challenges. We have a right blend of youth and experience in the team that provides us with the right balance of cutting edge modern technologies and real-life critical business-problem solving acumen. Also, we have the entire portfolio of Oracle products being catered to, from the same location. This hub constitutes experts of various Cloud services such as SaaS/PaaS/IaaS and cutting edge technologies like IoT/Blockchain/Data Integration/Cybersecurity. Finally, access to an amazing wealth of technical assets and next-gen product suites of Oracle is one of our biggest strengths.

AIM: What do you think about the market scenario in India regarding analytics/IoT/AI?

RB: As a country of 1.3 billion people, we generate enormous volume, velocity and variety of data every minute. The acceptance rate to these technologies across early adopting industries such as e-commerce has increased significantly with reports suggesting that Analytics/AI could add $957 billion to the Indian economy in the coming years. Some sectors like the banking and healthcare have been a tad slow in high tech adoption in the past. But big names like SBI and Narayana Hrudayalaya have shown the way here by embracing the new technologies to improve employee collaboration and productivity by adopting Oracle Cloud.

Analytics/AI could add $957 billion to the Indian economy.

In addition, there are various untapped areas with tremendous potential in terms of applying advanced analytics/ML/AI – e.g. general elections, sports analytics, policy and governance etc. There will be a lot of job openings in this area and we will need people with the right skills. It is heartening that the premier institutes in the country have taken note and started offering new courses specifically focused on these areas. Another game changer will be Government initiatives like Digital India and Smart Cities/Villages. This will create lots of opportunities resulting in smart solutions to a lot of problems for the common people once they embrace and implement these technologies. A great example is the MoU between the Government of Maharashtra and Oracle to create a Centre of Excellence (CoE) in Mumbai, to help connect 29,000 villages of Maharashtra and launch government-to-citizen and government-to-business services in the state. The MoU plans to accelerate the state’s digital transformation initiatives, leveraging Oracle’s Cloud solutions and develop the state’s smart city program.

AIM: Do you face any challenges when hiring new talent in the company? What are they?

RB: There is no substantial challenge other than the skill set aspect when hiring new talent. For the experienced people, I feel the real-life experience of understanding and solving business problems that their customers face will help instead of only theoretical knowledge. For the fresh hires, I think they should have a sound understanding of the basic concepts of statistics/computer science.

AIM: Advice for people who are in/want to join the world of New Tech

RB: My first and foremost advice will be to find your calling and don’t just get into the new tech only because it’s regarded as the sexiest job of the century or is considered the latest buzzword. I feel the most important thing at the end of the day is to enjoy what you do and be able to give your best. Also, I believe there is great value in being really good at one thing rather than being average in ten things. So, I would suggest instead of trying to learn every hot tech buzz in the market, pick something that interests you and develop an in-depth expertise in that. You will notice that going forward this will help you in learning additional skills much more efficiently.

AIM: How should SMEs go about inculcating New Tech in their companies?

RB: There has been no better time than today to inculcate new technologies for the companies irrespective of their size, and the single most important reason is Cloud. With the advent of cloud, you no longer need to worry about huge investments on infrastructure and then ponder over the complexities during upgrade/maintenance. For example, with Oracle Cloud, you can easily choose the kind of offerings that you need (SaaS, PaaS or IaaS) and forget the one-time huge investment that you would have to make otherwise. You can pay subscription charges and scale up or down based on your business needs. You also make your IT team more productive by getting rid of mundane administrative tasks like applying patch, upgrades, maintenance etc. and let them focus on getting insights from data, architecting applications, building security best practices and supporting their business users much better. This enables the business to innovate much faster, get rapid insights from data, deploy applications rapidly and bring new products and services to market faster and leapfrog their competition.

AIM: Where do you see India in the New Tech sector in the next five years?

RB: India is the fastest growing economy and in the next 5 years we will continue to see similar growth. We are making enormous progress in terms of technology that is highly efficient and yet very economical. There are various examples from Mars missions to autonomous vehicles where our solutions are at par with the best in the world at a fraction of the cost. In the large cities and large organisations, new technologies are present at large whether it is IoT, ML, AI or AR/VR. So, this will continue to grow in a similar way, but what we need is the democratisation of these technologies by making them accessible to all comers of the country.

I believe a great change will take place as we move towards smart cities/villages. Once we are presented with unfamiliar problems and newer challenges from different corners of the country, the technologies will also evolve and mature. The small village of Mori in Andhra Pradesh, often cited as India’s first smart village is a great example in this regard. Academicians and high tech companies came up with incubation centres to understand the villager’s problems, and then they not only resolved those with new tech solutions such as IoT, Mobile Apps and Analytics but also partnered with the villagers and trained them first hand. I really think this is going to be the way forward in the coming years where technology and innovation will continue to grow, giving way to collaboration from a host of unlikely quarters.

NOTE: The statements and opinions expressed here are Ranajoy’s own and do not necessarily represent those of Oracle Corporation.

The post Oracle Relies On Next-Gen Analytics Capabilities To Empower Users: Ranajoy Bose, Oracle Cloud Solutions Hub appeared first on Analytics India Magazine.

Will artificial intelligence take over the world? Or will it be a blessing to humanity? To understand broader issues like these, engineers at the University of Buffalo were awarded a $1 million by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) in the US.

The project for which such a huge grant was awarded was to identify ways to combine physics-based models with conventional, data-driven AI methods — which basically means teaching physics to AI systems.

Interestingly, this project of teaching physics to AI systems is being led by an Indian professor and Engineer in UB Artificial Intelligence Institute which focusses on autonomous systems, advances core AI technologies that optimise human-machine partnerships and provides complementary tools and skills to understand the societal impact of these technologies.

What Will Be The Outcome Of This Project?

• The main goal of this project is to provide AI systems, which work within specific frameworks and lack tools to explain the reasoning process, with a broader foundation of knowledge through physics.
• The project, in theory, will allow for more streamlined, efficient and adaptable AI systems which are ideal traits for defence systems, such as unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs), which operate in uncontrolled environments. These UAVs will get an understanding of the physics of things like how birds fly.
• This information, combined with weather and data that other sensors are processing, will also provide the UAV with better collision-avoidance mechanisms.
• It will also reduce the amount of data that purely data-driven AI systems require.
• And, also will lead to more efficient and less costly systems as these combined models will provide AI systems with a greater understanding of their surroundings.
• To make all these hypotheses viable and practical physics-based models will be integrated.

According to Rahul Rai, the grant’s principal investigator and associate professor at UB’s School of Engineering and Applied Sciences, that unmanned aerial vehicles are trained in collision avoidance. For example, they spot another UAV or a bird and take an action, such as slowing down, to avoid striking that object.

To make that possible, Rai and his team to trying to integrate physics-based model ,which are simply math-based formulas that can explain the world around us, such as Einstein’s E=MC2 into the algorithms that are primarily guiding machine learning, deep learning and other data-driven AI systems, which overall fundamentally sums up to teaching simpler physics to advanced AI systems.

Based on what Rahul Rai says, the project’s is about creating hybrid systems that can generalize well, which means they will be easily able to adapt into foreign environments where data may not be readily available.

Outlook

• Intelligent systems need to incorporate a significant amount of understanding of the world in terms of intuitive physics.
• This understanding can be gained from data in multiple ways. Now, a group of researchers from UB Artificial Intelligence Institute are trying to achieve for enhancing the capabilities of UAVs.
• Earlier AI team of  INRIA and Facebook developed a simpler evaluation framework which diagnosed how much a given system understands about physics, by testing the system’s computation plausibility of possible physical events versus the computation of plausibility of impossible physical events.

Just to make sure the goal of the project can be grasped easily by the general audience; the project is reflected simply as teaching physics to AI systems.

But the pertinent reason behind such big shot investment by a military agency like DARPA is to use machine learning to assist in gathering intel and eradicate possible enemies in war zones. By teaching machines completely act on its own to identify and then make decisions in neutralizing targets could be the primary aim.

The post How This Indian Professor From University Of Buffalo Will ‘Teach’ Physics To AI Systems appeared first on Analytics India Magazine.

Bengaluru traffic can be quite a challenge to mitigate if you do not plan ahead and start several hours early to reach your workplace on time. Despite having the liberty of flexible office hour, Marion Roussel doesn’t like to take chances. Even though her work starts only at 10 am, she is at her office between 9:15 and winds up her work a little late, leading us to believe that she might be the best contender of ‘Best on Time Employee’ at Capital Float, that is if they do have one.

Roussel is as a Senior Decision Scientist at Capital Float and for this week’s edition of ‘Day In The Life Of‘, we caught with up her to know more about her role as a data scientist in India and about her interesting observations about the country. Originally from France, she has been working in India for the past two years and her responsibility as a decision scientist requires her to lead a team and work on multiple projects at a time.

For Roussel, a weekday starts as early as 7.30 am and stretched up to 6.45 pm. Due to heavy traffic during the rush hour, she leaves for work quite early in the mornings. “I generally spend 35 minutes commuting if I leave home before 8:45 am. Bengaluru traffic can be hard to negotiate; hence I try to commute early morning not to end-up spending one hour in traffic jams,” Roussel says about the city’s infamous traffic.

Capital Float is a digital finance company that creates models that aim to help or replace human intervention in underwriting loans. Her primary role at Capital Float is to ensure that her team have all the tools and skills to build reliable models for the company. As a PhD holder in statistics and modelling, her expertise and knowledge are regularly sought in the subjects as well. “I am sometimes working on building models myself when I get time. At Capital Float, every modelling person is building a model from A to Z, meaning from understanding the requirement of specifying the project, including data preparation, model building and validation, to model monitoring. It is very rewarding to see our ideas being deployed and used by the company in a very short time span,” she says.

Since her work is largely sedentary, she feels that working out and remaining fit is rather important. She is also a regular practitioner of yoga, something she discovered after moving to India. An avid travel enthusiast, she also finds joy in travelling the length and breadth of India, “My hobby is travelling, and India has so much to offer. I like backpacking and we used to get out of Bangalore every alternate weekend, either by night train or flight. Some places that I particularly liked: Goa, Hampi, Amritsar, Coonoor and many others,” she adds.

Roussel who maintains an active social life believes that the key performs well in work is to have a good work/life balance. Since team building and interaction is crucial at her workplace, Roussel can be seen hanging out with her colleagues and or catching up for a game of badminton occasionally.

During our conversation with her, she is careful to not speak anything out of context about the country or culture, though one thing she pointed out is the short lunch break. It is no secret that the French love their food and enjoy good conversations over a long lunch, although she has adapted to the quick 30 minutes lunch break, Roussel point out that she mostly prefer homemade food and occasionally meet up with her friends for home dinners.

At Capital Float, she is currently working on a project to assess customer’s defaulting risk through predictive models, “These models built are using traditional machine learning algorithms as well as more complex deep learning algorithm depending on the type and availability of data. The projects are using diverse modelling techniques and data, that is making the work challenging,” she explains.

For Roussel, data science and modelling have become an indispensable part of her life, so when asked about her five-year-plan, she effortlessly replies, “For sure, the Data Science field is very promising for the future and not only in the finance field. A long-term career in this domain is definitely a good choice.”

The post A Day In The Life Of: French Decision Scientist Who Juggles Predictive Models And Bengaluru’s Traffic Jams Efficiently appeared first on Analytics India Magazine.

Michael Atiyah is a mathematician who had single-handedly changed the face of differential geometry. He studied in Cambridge where he became a Fellow of Trinity College and later held professorships at Princeton and Oxford. He is best known for his work on K-theory and the Atiyah-Singer Index Theorem, which is considered as one of the most fundamental theorems that can be used to explain our universe.

A-S theorem occupies a vivid spot amongst the fundamental theorems. He has won the prestigious the Fields and Abel prizes for his remarkable contribution to the field of mathematics. He also had a brief stint as the president of the Royal Society of London, the oldest scientific society in the world, a former master of Trinity College, Cambridge; a knight and a member of the Royal Order of Merit.

The contributions of Atiyah to the field of mathematics are vast and equally complex. He has an intuition for arranging just the right intellectual liaisons, often times involving himself and his own ideas, and over the course of his career, which spanned over 50 years, he bridged the gap between disparate ideas within the field of mathematics, and between mathematics and physics.

He helped direct Ed Witten and Graeme Segal to demonstrate that Quantum Field Theory really was beyond a physical theory. This collaboration resulted in techniques for calculating and exploring the complexities involved with topology. For instance, the concept of vector bundles, which Atiyah pioneered in the early stages of his career, help to get an intuition about how planets with twists and turns behave. Here is an illustration of Planet Hopf.

In the 1980s, methods gleaned from the index theorem unexpectedly played a role in the development of string theory.

Atiyah-Singer Index theorem has changed the face of mathematical physics forever and for good, one of its implications are in answering a few confounding questions in regards to String theory like:

• Can it explain three generations of chiral fermions?
• Can it explain the experimental results on proton decay?
• Can it explain the smallness of the electron mass?
• Can it explain [things about the cosmological constant]?

When a leading science magazine asked Atiyah about what he thinks of mathematics, he quipped, “People think mathematics begins when you write down a theorem followed by a proof. That’s not the beginning, that’s the end. For me, the creative place in mathematics comes before you start to put things down on paper before you try to write a formula. You picture various things, you turn them over in your mind. You’re trying to create, just as a musician is trying to create music or a poet. There are no rules laid down. You have to do it your own way. But in the end, just as a composer has to put it down on paper, you have to write things down. But the most important stage is understanding. A proof by itself doesn’t give you understanding. You can have a long proof and no idea at the end of why it works. But to understand why it works, you have to have a kind of gut reaction to the thing. You’ve got to feel it.”

Michael Francis Atiyah had this incredible insight for combining two distant theories and deduce something magical out of it. His contributions and collaborations with the likes of other mathematical giants like Witten, Penrose and Singer, will remain etched in the fabric of mathematical sciences till eternity.

The post They Had Gauss, We Had Michael Atiyah, One Of The Greatest Mathematicians Of 21st Century appeared first on Analytics India Magazine.

It’s isn’t every day that you come across a social entrepreneur who’s passionately responding to the global challenge of upskilling in artificial intelligence and robotics by addressing the issue at the grassroot level. As AI, machine learning and robotics begin to take a leading role in day-to-day governance and organisational level, the upskilling in these technologies is something left to Indian metros and upscale classrooms. But as the chorus around AI grows louder, what’s apparent is the large gap in AI education and advocacy among the rural sector in India.

This is an area that Tamil Nadu-based woman social entrepreneur K Suriya Prabha, mother of two and a former web designer is addressing by turning the tide and creating more equitable opportunities for rural children by fostering digital skills – chief among them is coding and familiarity with robotics.   

Inside YouCode Intelligence Solutions

Prabha, inspired by PM Modi’s Digital India campaign and AI guru Fei Fei Li, who believes AI education can be a great enabler launched an edtech social enterprise startup YouCode Intelligence Solutions in 2018, to make the vision of Digital India come true. A native of Cumbum, Theni district in Tamil Nadu, Prabha initially didn’t set out to be a social entrepreneur.  Her interest in robotics and AI was partly sparked by her entrepreneur spouse, Karthik Kannan, who runs his own startup in Chennai.

Spurred by him and watching how AI is now redefining the educational landscape, she decided to take AI education to the economically disadvantaged section of society, that lacks the infrastructure and ecosystem to teach advanced technologies with YouCode, a completely bootstrapped startup. So far, she along with her team of 5 members has reached out to 4000-6000 students in Government schools in the district of Madurai, Ramnad and Virudhunagar in TN.

“Since the students of today need to work in a future where AI is a reality, it is important to expose the village students to AI-based technology early on. Also, India has the largest student population in the world, and it is our moral and social responsibility to prepare the next generation for the AI future,” she said.

Preparing the young for an AI-era with AI4Kids Campaign

The programme was initiated in government schools to build awareness about computer science, electronics, robotics and AI and taps in students from Class VI onwards. It is run in Government schools only, and the course content has been created by Prabha and her team. In addition to this, Prabha chiefly teaches Python in the Block-based coding format to make learning more interactive, fun and engaging.

She has also run several sessions and demonstrations with village students with Google AIY kits which is a playful way of introducing AI to children. Also, the team leverages Amazon Deeplens that allows for an interactive based AI demonstration. Ask her what are the key learnings students take away from these programmes, and she says, ‘It is their reaction from surprise to excitement and enthusiasm for technology which is very encouraging for us. These village kids are eager to learn about new technologies, but they have never been exposed to AI kits or robots. They saw the robots for the first time during our demonstration”.

Future Campaigns

On the anvil is gamifying learning concepts with solutions built in house. For example, the startup is experimenting with Conversational AI programme for students that can provide personalised learning and evaluation as well. The programme is akin to an AI teacher and can even drum up real-time answers to questions posed by students. Not only that, it can even respond to the child’s gestures and identify the emotions (for eg. happy or sad), she claimed. In addition to this, the startup is also dabbling with an AI system that can be used to automate the student’s evaluation process. “I believe AI can play a critical role in evaluation in the coming years and allow teachers to spend more time with students and upskill them effectively,” she shared. Up next, she also plans to run a campaign for women upliftment, even though details are scarce.

Way Forward

While her startup is completely bootstrapped, Prabha is actively looking for outside funding. She revealed that the startup is in the final stages of pitching the “idea and importance of AI in Indian education to Google Launchpad accelerator”.

The post This Social Entrepreneur Is Closing The AI Education Gap By Reaching Out To Rural India appeared first on Analytics India Magazine.

SAP, which started as a venture by five young engineers in the early ‘70s, has now grown into a multinational giant housing nearly 1,00,000 employees and servicing more than 4,00,000 customers.

SAP SE offers services ranging from ERP to CRM, Digital Supply chain and other advanced business intelligence tools, enhancing the ease of operation across the enterprises. This German company has also made giant strides in the Indian corporate scenario with its solutions to automate processes, empower employees and create revenue with ease and intelligence.

In conversation with Analytics India Magazine Kaushik Bagchi, Vice President and Head – Digital Enterprise Platform Group, SAP India sub-continent, talked at length about their products and the company’s vision for the future.

Bagchi, who has over 20 years or work experience, completed his MBA from Calcutta University and helmed managerial positions at Oracle and IBM. During his stint at IBM, as a Vice President, he ran information management business for IBM, it was a combination of DB2, Cognos and later joined as Director at Autodesk before moving on to SAP as VP and Head.  

Analytics India Magazine: Tell us about your role and work at SAP SE?

Kaushik Bagchi: SAP business team aims to access, process and consume information in a residency neutral manner for the customer.

Accessing information at the enterprise level has changed dramatically since 3 yrs, because IT infrastructure which helps to access information depends on the volume and velocity of data, due to digitization these parameters are changing. People expect me to act on data immediately, so the whole access trajectory of information for large corporates is going through a major shift. The idea is to construct an infrastructure to collect and connect. It is our responsibility to give customers to access information

A decade ago, there was only one way to process information. That was to put information in the relational database and run queries. This has changed now, due to the nature of data. Now the whole idea is of a Unified container to process information, this is called a Relational Database. In the last three or four years, the world is moving towards multi-speciality containers. Transactional, relational data, unstructured data, large data, real-time data make up these multi-speciality containers. It is our responsibility to offer customers multi-speciality containers to process their information.

Accessing and processing information, which is collectively termed as Analytics, also leads to the next part- consumption. One needs to consume info in meaningful ways. one needs to construct meaningful technology for clients to consume data. Data is consumed in 3 manners:

1. The manner which is reports, dashboards, things that get pushed onto people at regular intervals
2. Advanced analytics- enterprises have been automating transactions for a long period of time. Now we will help customers assist their processes and help them become agile. we have to see things ahead of time and use advanced analytics for the process to recommend things to the customer.
3. Agile analytics- When you take a decision in transit, agile is getting popular because earlier humans were only seeing reports and when they would have queries, they would go to somebody but today integrated apps are running algorithms on data. So they won’t wait. One needs agility to be able to act on data.
4. Residency neutral manner- customers can build their hybrid infrastructure network on cloud and print. To give them an advantage to access info, whether big data  or real-time data. It can be done as a combination of both platforms.

AIM: Can you brief us about the product that you are working on right now?

KB: SAP implements various tools and products to perform access, process and consume functionalities. They are as follows:

Access, collect and connect – tools like SDI (Smart data integrator), SAP data harp, SAP data management suite, key products help one to do all processes that are required to handle data access. These include data transformation process, managing metadata as you connect to multiple data sources; all of this is a part of Sap Data Management Suite.

Process- we usually have big data containers on the cloud, data harp helps you manage big data, connect it to large data sets then merge with transactional data (TD). TD can be run on ‘Hana’. In real-time data, Hana is one of the best innovations in the last 6 yrs, flagship product to handle real-time info. Because of the swing of digital technology, people’s need to access real-time info has increased. that’s why there’s so much update in HANA because people value to manage information in real time.

The consumer focus is on analytics, so SAP analytics portfolio, the cloud analytics portfolio which is significantly seen in the market because we really tried to understand what customers want to understand out of data.  Our embedded analytics built on our tech. Eg- if I am building a tool, my analytics tool which will govern the embedded analytics of all SAP apps moving forward. many customers globally deployed, imaging capability, versatility and robustness of my analytics platform, most people undermine this. Most of us need to understand this. SAP needs these tools to run apps to lakhs of customers. The platform around ML, AI and Blockchain, a lot of content is on the cloud.

For the residency neutral manner- how we make data easily available on the cloud, SAP Cloud Platform and sap cloud analytics ( which is a container on the sap cloud platform ). these data services can run on an SAP cloud platform, which can directly connect to the business services. that’s our data strategy.

We have been preparing ourselves for data explosion, in volume, velocity and quality. Since people want to access data in real time, there is a massive diversity of data, `because the nature of data is radically changing. multiple tools and technologies are not easy for enterprises

Data systems are sustainable but difficult to maintain since earlier updates would come once a year now they come every week. how much can one keep updating, sources can’t be overwritten. ACP has built a complex analytic data portfolio is because there’s a business.

AIM: How is SAP implementing Cloud services for its products?

KB: Cloud is a concept where it’s infra, platform and software are a service. We aren’t into infrastructure since we are not an infrastructure company. We look into platform and software as a service (PaaS and SaaS).

We have a large customer base because people want to move their business to cloud, maintain data and operationalize it. For example, the warranty data of a product, inventory data have to be maintained and corrected. whatever u want to build in the frontend, and successful business-wise, it has to go in and out of ACP many times. Either use 3rd  party operators which use adapters and keep connecting till you update or use ACP cloud platform, they have all business services like IOT, predictive built into the product. this will work till the innovation n tech are better than others. our customers don’t lose out on innovations and can do necessary innovations on data.

The post SAP Is Redefining The Way Data Is Accessed And Consumed, Says Kaushik Bagchi appeared first on Analytics India Magazine.

Software development is fun and there is no doubt in that. But when we talk about how a software developer spends his/her day, then it’s definitely not a smooth ride. When you are creating products that are going to solve problems of a huge amount of people, you have to expect challenges on a day to day basis.  

So, to get a clearer view of a software engineer’s typical day and for this week’s “A Day In The Life Of” series, Analytics India Magazine had an exclusive interview with two brilliant software developers from HealthFin, Akash Meshram and Vivek Sthul.

The duo, Akash and Vivek start their roles at HealthFin at 9 in the morning and they also work late night as they love working at that hour. Talking about the working place, Akash and Vivek love the atmosphere at HealthFin. “There are hardly any restrictions; the Organization is quite liberal, and we enjoy the atmosphere,” said the duo.

As the duo walked us through their day, we asked them what their work consists of, Vivek explained, “I work on some interesting and challenging things. Recently, using image recognition and text detection, we processed the customer documents such PAN card, electricity bill, passport etc. and we generated our own credit score of the customer using different parameters like credit/banking history, social profiles, financial story, and many more versatile parameters.”

On the other hand, Akash’s work consists of developing front-end for HealthFin Employees, customers and a portal for operations using Reactis. “Integrating front end with backend Python apps, developing dashboard consists of a various graphical representation of data for the analysis purposes. The dashboard requires a lot of data cleaning and analysis, and is quite a challenging project because the type of analysis we present is very intensive and inclusive,” said Akash.

Talking about the company and whether it is making full use the duo’s talent, they said HealthFin gives them the privilege to implement their own ideas; an employee has the full authority to work on its own ideas which will help the company.

Successfully juggling work and personal life

Being part of a startup sounds fancy, however, it is not an easy task to manage the work-life-balance; it takes a lot of commitment. And it is the same with Akash and Vivek. But, having an employee-centric atmosphere, HealthFin never restricts its employees from taking frequent short breaks and relax.

Personal life is fairly affected, but as this is a startup it is expected to happen the same way. the stress and work commitment are necessary.

Even after working day in and out, Akash and Vivek always manage to take time out for themselves. So, when not coding or programming, the duo can be found playing Badminton or cricket. Akash loves music, so he can also be found at some singing session or learning guitar.

Everybody has their favourite of a day and when we asked the duo about their best part of the day, the answers were completely different but really interesting. For Vivek, its “Chai Pe Charcha”, that’s what he has named the discussion session. “It is the Best part of the working day; we all discuss a lot of things which is not included in regular work stuff,” said Vivek.

On the other hand, Akash is more into getting things done. “I always focus on finishing the task as early as possible and if I get the solution in minimum time for the bigger tasks, it gives me immense happiness. I think that is the best part of the day for me,” said Akash.

“Our work is genuinely appreciated. I have developed various data analysis this year which I wasn’t even asked to do.”

The Future Roadmap

Akash at present is working on advanced analytics dashboards, and document verification microservices. While on the other hand, Vivek is working on multiple projects are active. However, for him, the most exciting part is generating a strong credit score on the basis of customer’s social life. “We want to arrive at these two things – the ability to pay and intention to pay. Now the ability to pay can be arrived at using credit scores, bank history, and transaction details and so on. It is difficult is to find whether a customer has the intention to pay. This is a very interesting challenge and we are accruing some good progress here,” said Vivek.

When asked about the goals, Vivek wants to become a  certified AI/ML programmer and create open source frameworks which other developers can use easily. And for Akash, his goal is to develop a platform where the process is fully automated with less human interaction and involvement and which is less time-consuming.

Looking into the future, the duo wants to make HealthFin the best technological platform in the FinTech ecosystem that can process and disburse loans to the needy within minutes.

The post A Day In The Life Of: How These HealthFin Coders Have A Synergetic Approach To Work & Life appeared first on Analytics India Magazine.

Finance and HR are like two opposite ends of the world — they are different in terms of several things. However, despite the differences, these two departments are dependent on one another and need each other to achieve the ultimate goals of an organisation. To have a clearer view of this entire scenario, Analytics India Magazine caught up with Mr Guruprasad Gaonkar.

Guruprasad Gaonkar is working as an APAC SaaS Leader – Office of Finance, Operations & Digital Supply Chain, Oracle

AIM: What does the intertwining of HR & finance mean for businesses in general and also for CFOs & CHROs?

GP:  If you look at India, the data shows that we have the world’s youngest workforce and in fact, we will have the world’s largest workforce as well. There are a set of people who are used to Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and Instagram. And when they join one of the regulated industries, they are expected to follow hierarchy and processes; they are given clunky screens to work on. So, it gets difficult for them to be productive.

In order to increase not only the per employee productivity but also translating it into more efficiencies for the organisation, CFO on the expense side and CHRO from the human capital management need to work together.

Also, in finance & HR, the focus on automation is huge — be it robotic automation to screen CVs or to churn out the redundant tasks in finance. Put simply, robotic process automation is like your digital twin brother who will do the work.

Finance and HR are two departments that have an influence on a lot of other departments; whether its recruitment in the supply chain or procurement. With the help of emerging technologies like Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Machine Learning (ML), finance and HR can embed business logic to direct, influence in all these business functions that they work with.

AIM: Today, almost every business relies on innovation. What do you think, how unifying finance & HR cloud or SaaS results in more innovation?

GP: When a CHRO focuses on workforce planning, there are multiple components that need to be taken care of — be it in terms of skillset which is HR specific, cost component which is finance specific or the implication on the balance sheet which is planning aspect. So, organisations having one data model across finance and HR are able to seamlessly operate as one enterprise or a truly one enterprise. Otherwise, while they have one integrated system, they still operate as silos.  This is where cloud or SaaS comes into the play.

SaaS translates to speed:  When I talk about speed, it is not only about staying up-to-date on technology but also staying up-to-date on regulation. So, for example, when GST regulation changes and if you are on one of those old school solutions then the vendor sends you a patch, you then check the patch whether it is going to impact your existing situation and then you hire a Software Integrator. The time to realise is very long. However, in SaaS, it is centrally distributed or implemented.

SaaS translates into eliminating complexity: No organisation starts with being complex, but as they grow, they inherit a lot of procedures that result in complexity. SaaS completely eliminates complexity by keeping it simple.

Innovation: Talking about Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Machine Learning (ML), you may spend a lot of money going around employing people, doing design thing as an approach, and coming up with a huge case and implementing it. But for you to access some of these innovations, it is not cost-effective and even if it is cost effective, you do not have the necessary skills to be able to bring this to business value.

In this case, SaaS provides the foundation and access to some of these sophisticated tools to drive business value because most of the SaaS application have embedded AI and Machine Learning in our case. So, I believe SaaS definitely is driving business value for customers.

AIM: What all are the industries that are going to be benefitted from this unison?

GP: We have been successful in pretty much all industries. But from a SaaS perspective, we have seen that the biggest adoption for SaaS application is coming from the digital natives. For example, Grab that serve 640 million population across all South-East Asia countries – Singapore, Thailand, Malaysia, Indonesia etc. Talking about digital natives, there are challenges —they want to get into new products, they want to get into a new market, they want to get into new geographies. And they always have to deal with a high transaction volume and that requires automation. So, for them to go to SaaS is a no-brainer.

The second biggest taker for SaaS is the financial services industry as this is one industry which is heavily disrupted by digital transformation. For example, HSBC Bank — they operate whole finance, especially their two back-office functions on Oracle ERP. They do not want to bring the technology and change the technology to suit the bank, in fact, they want to bring the technology and change the way the bank operates. It is the best practice that is possible in SaaS.

Furthermore, the third set of industries what we have seen is the traditional professional service organisations. For example, we have Wipro as a professional service organisation, or PWC or Deloitte. These are the people who are advisors to the CFOs and all of them run their finance functions of Oracle ERP SaaS. And beyond that, we have a lot of logistics companies in India, especially Safexpress and Transworld. We also have insurance companies like Religare Health Care Trust. So, the momentum for our ERP SaaS business across the board in India and in Asia-Pacific is phenomenal.

AIM: What role Oracle is playing in this unison across industries?

GP: Our core business is technology and software application. We also have another core business application, which is a database application infrastructure. So, we want to stick to our core business — that is how we bring the application, technology, and infrastructure together to add value to the customers and that is where SaaS gives us a unique value proposition. a

Also, we are offering solutions to any and every department; be it in HR, procurement, finance, logistics or the supply chain. We had applications which ran in silos and organisations who implemented the solutions in the past were running like silos. So, we then brought a one-data model across all these businesses, which means that anything you do in HR has an implication in finance.

Lastly, being in a SaaS industry, especially when the customers are relying on us, we have to continuously innovate. So, we are releasing 230 functionalities per quarter; we are no longer talking about per year, but we are continuously releasing functionalities per quarter which embeds these innovative technologies as part of the SaaS application. So, this is how we are helping to make CHRO & CFO become more focused, more strategic, and focus on business outcomes.

We have 5,500 customers for ERP SaaS, another 15,000 for NetSuite that is 21% market share.  So obviously, this success has also transmitted a lot market share for us, in terms of clear leadership across SaaS ERP world.

Final Words From Guruprasad Gaonkar

We have existed for more than 40 years, we have a lot of customers who run on our on-premise solutions — whether it is finance or HR. Earlier this year, we launched the world’s first automated upgrade to SaaS which means that if you are running on any of those on-premise solutions, we are longer calling it migration, we are actually calling it upgrading to SaaS. And we are saying this is the last upgrade you will ever do because in the SaaS world there is no concept of an upgrade like in Gmail — there is no concept of an upgrade.

Also, we have announced that we are committed to a 30% reduction in time to implement and cost implement. So, we are actually putting in Oracle’s skin in the game by making our customers risk-free. That is not all, we are on-boarding customers where we are letting them go-live in less than 20 weeks. And this is what we have launched in India for HR and finance customers who are running on our on-premise in the past.

The post How Oracle Is Pushing The Adoption Of SaaS In Finance & HR: Guruprasad Gaonkar, APAC SaaS Leader, Oracle appeared first on Analytics India Magazine.

Data Science being one of the most sought after jobs, it needs a lot of commitment; it is an everyday challenge for almost every data science professional to strike a perfect work-life balance. One needs to have an effective priority list and strategies. In order to understand more about the life of a data scientist, Analytics India Magazine caught up with Priya Francis and Anshul Bazaz, data scientists at CSS Corp.

Francis starts her day at 6:30 in the morning and spends her day at CSS Corp from 9.30 am to 6.30 pm. However, her office timings might get stretched depending on client meetings and deliverables. On the other hand, Bazaz, whose day begins at 8 am, said, “It starts with me thinking about my work and what it is that I want to accomplish for the day. I check my emails to see the progress of any pending work and reply to any deliverables or upcoming meetings.”

Bazaz usual reaches office by 10 am and kick-starts his work by having discussions with his teammates and colleagues, where he exchanges ideas and update each other about work as well as current events. “Quite often these conversations result in suggestions which help me work better. Although the out-times vary on a day to day basis depending on the work,” said Anshul.

The Work Life

Talking about the duo’s job role at CSS Corp, Francis explained, “Being a Data Scientist, my role includes analysing, interpreting and managing data, and solving complex business problems using expertise in a variety of data niche.”

Francis works on massive amounts of structured and unstructured data for discovering actionable insights to shape or meet specific business needs and goals. It involves data collection, data cleaning, exploratory data analysis for deriving patterns out of data, building, validating, implementing and maintaining suitable statistical models for business use cases.

“CSS Corp’s work culture supports learning and development on the job. This gives me a great opportunity to work on challenging problems from scratch and provide innovative solutions that widen my horizon and enables me to learn the latest things,” said Priya.

Bazaz, on the other hand, works on understanding the client requirements and designing efficient analytical as well as visual solutions to the problems. “Another aspect of my work is interacting with various teams like UX, operations, and data engineering teams to assist in solution design. I am also into coding – data cleaning, exploratory data analysis, and statistical/machine learning models,” said Anshul. He is also involved in mentoring the new teammates who join the team.

“Since joining, my company has provided me immense opportunities to work in high impact projects that require not just effort, but significant knowledge about data science and machine learning concepts,” said Anshul.

Task At Hand

While we cruised through their lives as data scientists, the duo also told us about the projects they are working on at present.

Francis is currently working on developing and implementing a robust system for the case prioritisation of an enterprise networking company. “By flagging cases at an early stage, the system results in faster resolution of customer tickets, thereby improving customer satisfaction,” she explained. She is also working on analyzing customer sentiments and top call drivers from the interaction data.

Meanwhile, Bazaz is currently working on Adherence Impact Simulator, a research-oriented project centred around influenza vaccine uptake in various countries, and Key Phrase Extraction and Sentiment Analysis, which is about finding the leading cause of customer dissatisfaction/customer care delay by analyzing textual data consisting of conversations between customers and customer care.

Striking Work and Life Balance

For every professional, managing a perfect work-life balance is one of the toughest things. They not only give their 100% to the company but also make sure that they are spending enough time on themselves and with the family.

When asked how do they manage to juggle between their work and personal life, Priya said, “At CSS Corp, I have a fair work-life balance. Most meetings in the company are planned beforehand. So, we plan our schedule and prioritise tasks accordingly.” On weekends, Priya makes sure that she spends her time with her husband, catches up with their friends and tries out new restaurants. And if she doesn’t go out, she spends her time exploring her creative side by indulging in DIY crafts.

In conversation with Anshul, we found out that he loves playing and learning Piano and music theory; he mostly occupies himself with it during his free time. “I am a night owl, so I spend my time on this after work,” Anshul added. Since quite some time, he has been spending most of his free time nurturing his hobbies. However, Anshul does take out enough time to unwind and catch up with friends during weekends, and I heartily do it.

Talking about his work-life balance, he said “I believe in delivering high-quality work above all else. To achieve the same, me and my team sometimes work overtime, but not beyond 2-3 days of such high-intensity work in a month. Personally, I have not regretted it.”

“After we grind for days analysing millions of records and iteratively developing models, finding that first big insight that answers or partly answers the problem by showing us a better picture of the situation, is the best part of my workday,” said Anshul.

The Roadmap Ahead

When asked about their future roadmap, Francis said, at present, her goal is to successfully productionise and deploy the work items assigned to her on schedule. However, in the long run, she wants to understand various domains and integrate that with my knowledge to create better solutions for business problems and cater to the needs of the company.

Bazaz, on the other hand, is aiming to fill his knowledge gaps as well as expand his knowledge in terms of Data Science and Machine Learning concepts. “This is a fast-growing field and I want to keep myself at the forefront of it and hopefully learn as much as I can in the process,” he said.

Looking into the future, he is looking to gather enough experience and knowledge to lead Data Science initiatives. He wants to be able to design and execute a complete engagement from start to end and develop innovative solutions that place my company as an expert provider of Data Science solutions.

The post A Day In The Life Of: CSS Corp Data Scientists Give A Lowdown On Striking A Balance Between Professional & Personal Lives appeared first on Analytics India Magazine.

One cannot deny the fact that many young professionals and entrepreneurs take the startup path because it sounds exciting. However, the road to becoming an entrepreneur is not a cake walk — it takes a tremendous amount of dedication and hard work. It is not always about making money, it is about solving problems people face in their day to day life.

In order to get an idea about the startup world and what mindset one needs to have to start a venture of their own, Analytics India Magazine reached out to the co-founder and CEO of Yulu, Amit Gupta.

The Mind Behind One Of India’s Best Bicycle Renting Platform

Gupta grew up in a family where practically everyone was involved in the business. Therefore, since childhood, he saw value in entrepreneurship and self-reliance. A graduate from IIT Kanpur, Gupta also believed that when it comes to Startup, technology plays a vital role. “So I decided to spend my early part of professional life as a technologist with a clear aim of starting something on my own,” said Gupta.

Gupta co-founded InMobi, a global provider of enterprise platforms for marketers. He has played a significant role in building the company’s revenue engine and its expansion in more than 15 nations. “I was lucky and proud to be part of the founding team of InMobi. We achieved a lot of milestones together and I am sure there are many more to come,” said Gupta

But Gupta had another vision too; he wanted to solve traffic congestion and air pollution in big cities of India. And as an attempt, Gupta co-founded Yulu in October 2017 and launched the service in Bangalore in January 2018. “All of us are very passionate about this vision and have dedicated our next 10 years towards the same,” said Gupta.

In Conversation with Amit Gupta

AIM: What was your eureka moment?

AG: It was when I realised how my commute from home to office, which is 2.5 km has become from 7 mins to 35 mins due to traffic over 2 years when I relocated back from San Francisco to Bangalore.

We want to make our cities livable by moving people to sustainable mobility. We also believe that the majority of the growth of GDP in India needs to come from big cities. If the mobility of big cities is not efficient, it will directly impact the productivity and hence our growth rate.

Also, air pollution is causing a huge issue in our overall healthcare system. India now is officially the most polluted country in the world. Our air quality is 10x worse than the permissible safe limits, so it is a very critical need of the hour.

AIM: What were the challenges you faced?

AG: When you start your own venture, challenges come as add-ons. For Yulu, we had to fight several myths and perceptions about the feasibility and efficiency of using share small two-wheelers to make a change in behaviour at scale. However, our unique approach of partnering with large corporates and local municipal corporations of the cities has helped in creation in infrastructure for sustainable mobility. We have also innovated on the solution to reduce theft and vandalism of our vehicles using technology and local relationships.

AIM: “It is easy to start a venture but when it comes to scaling, it is difficult,” what is your take on this statement?

AG: At present, the startup ecosystem in India is much better than it used to be 10 years ago; one can get seed funding, dev tools, cloud computing etc. So if someone is making an honest attempt, starting a venture is not difficult. However, the real challenge comes in scaling it. The complexity of business goes multiple times higher due to market fragmentation, the scale of technology infrastructure, management of people, meeting expectations from the customers and last but not the least always evolving competition.

AIM: Talking about to the mindset, what kind of a mindset one should have when s/he steps into the arena of entrepreneurship?

AG: One must have a genuine passion for solving the pain-points or the opportunity he/she is going after. While there is no right age to start a company, I think that one should secure its dependents financially for at least a couple of years. Entrepreneurship is a very rewarding journey, but it requires a lot of sacrifices on the personal front.

Outlook

It is unfortunate that India has so many problems, however, at the same time, it is also an opportunity for entrepreneurs like us to solve them and create value for your stakeholders. Gupta says that don’t waste time-solving for small incremental gain; figure out a brand new way to address the need. It has to be dramatically better for you to make a huge impact. Look for what drives you the most and go for it with no looking back.

The post The Startup Mindset: Explained By Yulu Co-Founder & CEO Amit Gupta appeared first on Analytics India Magazine.

2018 was a landmark year for cloud business in India, with enterprises moving away from the “one-cloud-fits-all approach” and moving towards a multi-cloud or hybrid approach. Most companies were seen choosing multiple cloud providers and clouds such as public, private, software-as-a-service, to best meet their needs. As most companies are integrating cloud with existing IT to get more value, we had a detailed chat with Subram Natarajan, CTO of IBM India to understand trends that are relevant for the Indian enterprises and give insights into how cloud adoption is evolving in India.

Analytics India Magazine: How did the cloud business in India grow in 2018? How did it fare amidst the crucial merger and acquisitions witnessed in cloud space?

Subram Natarajan: Across our segments, our strategic imperatives revenue for the year was up 9% to about $40 billion. Within that, our cloud revenue is over $19 billion, and we exited the year with an annual run rate for cloud delivered as a service of over $12 billion which is up 21% over last year. We are continuing to deliver innovation in high-value areas. For example, in the Q4 2018, we introduced AI Open Scale a platform to manage the lifecycle of all forms of AI models and Multicoloured Manager service to deploy and manage complete applications, in any cloud environment. We are also adding innovative services to our cloud portfolio, like the world’s first commercial quantum computer available on the IBM Cloud. All of this is a validation of our hybrid, open approach to cloud and we have a strong foundation from which to drive synergies across the business with the addition of RedHat.

India continues to be a key growth market for the IBM Corporation. In 2018, we witnessed positive growth across our strategic imperatives including cloud in India, with clients across vertices including BFSI, Retail, Automotive, Telco turning to IBM Cloud for their Digital transformation journey. In addition, over 1200 start-ups are benefitting from the Startup with IBM initiative, where IBM provides start-ups with free cloud credits on IBM Cloud Solutions worth $120,000 annually, provides technical mentoring and go-to-market support.

AIM: As more enterprises are shifting their approach from ‘one-cloud-fits-all approach’ to multi-cloud and a hybrid approach, is it going to prove beneficial in the long run? Or are there more disadvantages in store?

SN: Hybrid multi-cloud architectures will replace the ‘one-cloud-fits-all’ approach. Businesses are seeking to drive value from the integration of public and private clouds by taking the hybrid multi-cloud approach. The approach uses a combination of on-premises, private cloud and public cloud architecture, with the best-in-class resources from different cloud vendors. A hybrid approach enables teams to run applications across private, dedicated and multi-tenant public cloud infrastructures, while a multi-cloud approach embraces multiple vendors to support a breadth of enterprise workloads.

A report by IBM highlights that by 2021, 98% of organisations plan to adopt multi-cloud architectures, but only 41% have a multi-cloud management strategy and just 38% have procedures and tools to operate a multi-cloud environment. So, we will see IT organisations undergo a culture shift in the way that they work and require teams equipped with new skillsets. The approach will create job titles such as a cloud service broker, cloud architect and cloud automation engineer and it will be increasingly commonplace to manage the changing environments.

AIM: How does the cloud enable more interoperability of platforms and data?

SN: As hybrid multi-cloud architectures replace the ‘one-cloud-fits all’ approach, we believe that cloud skills and culture will be key to cloud adoption. As organisations adopt the multi-cloud approach, IT organisations will undergo a shift in thinking IT, more and more as a service. Traditional hardware-centric IT data centre functions such as servers, storage and the network will become increasingly software driven to function within the new cloud frameworks. Secondly, we will see developers focussing proactively on security and integrate security into every facet of application design and deployment will provide greater application visibility, control and protection. Third, most companies will embrace the concept of open source to help them avoid lock-in and benefit from the interoperability of applications, platforms and data.

AIM: Cloud is like a force multiplier for companies, helping them accelerate AI-centric solutions? How will the adoption evolve in India in the coming years?

SN: 2018 was an incredible time for cloud computing. Its impact on customer experiences, business processes and models as well as workforce innovations was undeniable. We saw increased use cases of customers leveraging multiple clouds to enable innovation than ever before. However, the landscape will continue to change and evolve.

Most enterprises will leverage a nuanced approach towards legacy applications. This is the year enterprises will need to recognise and address the glaring reality that it’s not just as simple as lifting and shifting applications; it will require careful planning and significant resources to effectively tackle the legacy application behemoth.

Data transparency across platforms will become imperative. Unleashing the value of data by bringing out insights and integrating those with the business applications will be yet another natural evolution dimension in the cloud. It is also important to ensure 24*7 access and that it is everywhere. This is vital to ensure that the cloud is providing access anytime and anywhere to businesses, both large and small.

AIM: How did the RedHat acquisition bolster the company’s portfolio and put it in front-runner in the space of cloud and AI for 2019?

SN: The next chapter of Cloud Computing – hybrid multi-cloud opportunities are estimated to be $1 trillion by 2020, and the Red Hat acquisition positions IBM as the #1 company to address those opportunities. From a value perspective, in addition to the growing RedHat business itself, we see an opportunity to lift all of IBM by leveraging more of our own IBM Cloud, and by selling more of our analytics and AI capabilities on OpenShift across multiple platforms. And as clients proceed on their journey to get more business value from the cloud they need more services to help from digital design to app modernisation, to native app development, to management of hybrid cloud environments and we are best placed to offer all these end-to-end. In addition, we continue to build, nurture and grow a thriving and effective ecosystem where our partners can provide solutions, services, and value-based skills to enable their client’s success.

AIM: How is IBM diversifying their cloud portfolio? What is your strategy going forward in 2019?

SN: Today, a majority of Fortune 500 companies trust us to transition them to cloud, since we are well versed with industry, technology, their businesses and unique needs. IBM’s cloud strategy is grounded in helping clients securely bridge these workloads and associated data to the cloud by offering clients choice and flexibility in all the ways – on-premise, private, public cloud and multiple clouds. We launched IBM Cloud Private last year to enable companies to create on-premises cloud capabilities similar to public clouds. Since then, more than 300 clients are using, including NZ Police, Mangalore University, SKC&C, and Five9. We have invested in technology to acquire nearly 60 companies in the past years, with most of them in the cloud/analytics space (from The Weather Company to Cloudant to Clearleap). With more than 7,000 cloud technology patents, we are significantly ahead of our competitors in the areas of cloud, analytics and security.

We remain committed to offering businesses a highly flexible, open, hybrid cloud capability, which will allow them to deploy and move data and applications across private and public environments securely. Our continued focus on innovation will help our customers gain ready access to leading industry cloud-based services, such as AI, Blockchain, Security and Quantum. As clients adopt IBM Cloud to streamline business process and workflow expertise, secure, responsible management of enterprise data will remain a priority.

AIM: The cloud AI interdependency has led companies to invest in providing an additional layer of machine learning tools. How is this implemented in IBM?

SN: Our belief is that AI and Cloud have a natural symbiotic relationship that allows them to amplify the outcome. That is why a majority of the AI is offered as a service through IBM Cloud. For example, if one wants to implement a simple speech-to-text algorithm it is just a cloud service call away when developed on IBM Cloud. This removes the need to have elaborate setup separately for tools and the ensuing need to manage the same. As newer innovative services get introduced, it provides an opportunity to cross-leverage these AI services easily. For example, a blockchain application developer need not worry about installation of ML tooling, yet can easily incorporate AI services within the application.

AIM: Business leaders are concerned about workloads in multi-cloud environments. How can this challenge be resolved?

SN: In mid-October 2018, IBM unveiled the world’s first multi-cloud management technology to make it easier to manage, move and integrate apps across different cloud computing infrastructures with increased visibility of business processes, governance and security. We continue to address multiple challenges that the multi-cloud adoption poses by actively committing resources towards the emerging hybrid multi-cloud landscape which we see essential for unlocking deeper and widespread cloud usage by businesses and placing ourselves at the forefront of that industry.

IBM has nearly 60 global cloud data centres in 19 countries, and users can deploy into 6 regions and 18 availability zones globally. We have 13 cloud garages globally, which catalyses the design and development of applications with the more definitive business outcome.

Companies are concerned about the secure portability of data and workloads across cloud environments, about consistency in management and security protocols across clouds, and in avoiding vendor lock-in. While we continue to invest and grow the world’s largest cybersecurity and data protection business, the combination of IBM and Red Hat will help us accelerate addressing the issues of security further. IBM respects the privacy and security of its client’s data, we never sell it and we don’t use it to train AI.

Another measure of our commitment in this regard is evident through our offering: the first ever cloud services with mainframe-level encryption for the most intensive workloads.

The post Organisations Will Embrace Open Source To Avoid Lock-In & Boost Interoperability: Subram Natarajan, IBM appeared first on Analytics India Magazine.

In our column ‘A Day In The Life Of’, we are trying to step into the shoes of the awesome techies from various organisations who are working in Emerging Tech areas like big data, data analytics, artificial intelligence and the internet of things, among others.

This week Analytics India Magazine decided to talk to Kaleeaswari Somasundaram an Application Developer at ThoughtWorks, about her life as a dedicated techie who is working in a top company, in an area which is constantly changing and evolving.

Describing her job as “unblocking a blocker” Kaleeaswari starts her day at 6:00 am, and begins her work by clearing her inbox. “By the time I’m done, it’s time for the project team standup [meeting] where we talk through completed tasks, blockers and what we intend to complete over the day,” she says.

Efficiently juggling work and upskilling, Kaleeaswari tells us that she spends her day active on developments, conversations on technology and businesses implementations and experiments that tech groups, both, inside and outside ThoughtWorks, are running. Given the hiring pace that ThoughtWorks maintains, on most days, there are a few interviews for Kaleeaswari to carry out.

“I also spend my time with the learning and knowledge sharing groups that are a big part of our work culture.”

“I also spend my time with the learning and knowledge sharing groups that are a big part of the ThoughtWorks culture. These include external-facing technology and networking events or our internal facing office-wide standups. The latter is conducted both at a national and city-office level and are an opportunity for the larger group of employees to stay informed on and contribute to important issues, policies and activities that matter to my company,” she adds with a content smile.

Kaleeaswari, who loves cooking and tries out new recipes, tells us a little more about the project she’s working on. “I am currently working on an internal project at ThoughtWorks and am on the team that enables revenue-related business decisions at the company. It’s hugely data-driven, and my project-related daily activities include a lot of dev-huddles, coding, design and architecture discussions. This all is apart from the office-led activities that I am also a part of,” she says.

When asked about the best part of her workday, Kaleeaswari says that it’s definitely “unblocking a blocker”. “It’s a total high-five moment when the team and I are able to find a solution to a problem that we have been breaking our heads about! I also feel great when I contribute with meaningful and valid inputs during tech-huddles. All these small and big moments add to making my day at work great,” she says happily.

“Access to challenging and interesting business and technical problems helps me push my boundaries as a technologist.”

Painting a vibrant picture of the ThoughtWorks working environment, Kaleeaswari says that the company is very are conscious of how important a good work-life balance is. “Personally, I also make an effort to not drown myself in work but take a healthy interest in other activities like cooking that actually helps me be more creative at work,” she says. However, not everything goes according to plan every single time. “It does sometimes happen that there are knowledge sharing sessions or technical workshops that I am either running or want to participate in which eats into some of my personal time. There are also occasions of production issues that are urgent and have to be dealt with immediately, especially closer to or during go-live or deployment times,” she says.

When asked about her five-year plan, Kaleeaswari says that she wants to learn new things and acquire new knowledge in any and every role at work. “In five years, I would like to lead a team, putting what I have learned as a team member, into action and adopting new skills like mentoring and people management,” she adds.

“I would like to work towards using my role as a woman technologist to inspire more women to join this field, see me as a role model, and write their own success stories.”

But for now, her immediate goal is to work on as many different tech stacks as possible and build on her existing technical experience. “I am also focussing on getting a better handle of engineering and design with adequate business context. This is so I can contribute to solutioning and conversations with the team, with a solid understanding of the business and the challenges that we are trying to solve using technology. Finally, I am working on organising, participating in and coming up with interesting women-centric tech events that will encourage more diversity and inclusivity within technical circles,” she says, signing off.

The post A Day In The Life Of: ThoughtWorks Techie Who Is A Persistent Unblocker appeared first on Analytics India Magazine.

Hackathons have become the go-to solution for recruitment in top IT companies and startups. Over the last few years, hackathons have become a key parameter in the hiring process, with companies testing real-time problem-solving skills through these platforms. Hackathons have now become a baseline — a way to screen resumes and test candidates for the understanding of data science tools and how well they can execute the problem statement.

This month’s theme covers hackathons as a recruitment tool. For the first interaction, we got in touch with Puneet Gupta, SVP, Head of Engineering at HomeLane. An experienced tech expert with over 18 years of experience and 11 patents to his credit, he currently heads the engineering department and spearheads data and AI-driven tech innovations in the company to better the consumer experience. He shared how hackathons have become a crucial part of the hiring process in data science and how it has replaced the traditional way of hiring, and more.

Analytics India Magazine: Do you think hiring through Hackathons streamlines the hiring process? How has Hackathon been mainstreamed in the recruitment process?

Puneet Gupta: Hackathons are an excellent platform to meet passionate developers and product designers and engineers. They bring together individuals from diverse backgrounds and enable tapping into a pool of skilled and driven people for hiring. However, it is debatable whether all forms of hiring can be eased through hackathons. Niche roles and specialised competencies are hard to weave into a broad-based Hackathon, where the focus is on mobilising a larger community of hackers with certain core competencies.

AIM: What is your opinion about online Hackathon? Have Hackathons truly replaced the traditional way of hiring, say by campus hiring?

PG: Going online simplifies the logistics and reduces the costs for conducting hackathons, besides easing participation from hackers across the geographical regions. Therefore, it is simpler to tap into talent that is not local to your city or state. Campus hiring also benefits from such a platform, allowing more employers to reach across campuses across the country.

AIM: What is the main purpose of conducting a Hackathon for you?

PG: The primary purpose of the HomeLane hackathon is to connect with a community of exciting developers and explore hiring opportunities. More importantly, we hope that this opportunity helps us convey HomeLane’s commitment to technological innovations in the realm of cloud platforms & web applications.

AIM: Can you cite a recent example where you hosted a Hackathon? Could you state the purpose?

PG: We are conducting a Hackathon for backend developers/engineers on February 8, 2019, where we will be putting the talents of developers and engineers with 2-8 years of experience to test. Our primary purpose of hosting the hackathon is to connect with a community of exciting developers and explore hiring opportunities. We are hoping to find some extraordinarily talented engineers and developers through this event.

AIM: How important are Hackathons (both internal and external) to boost innovation? Has your organisation benefitted by conducting Hackathons?

PG: It always helps to take a break from the day-to-day work and explore avenues where a hitherto unexplored challenge awaits you. Innovation stems from constant learning and pushing the boundaries of comfort – something that hackathons are tailor-made for!

AIM: Besides building people capital, do hack-for-hire also help in positioning the company as innovative and help in branding?

PG: Absolutely. It reflects an open, modern mindset for the company and such branding is very welcome for budding startups as well as established tech giants, especially among the young and passionate tech population.

AIM: Hackathons have become the benchmark for assessing baseline skills? Do you agree, if so what skills? How reliable it is to test skills in the long run?

PG: Most hackathons these days focus on programming skills, problem-solving or backend full-stack web development. These find synergy in the nature of the technology landscape that dominates the industry. It depends on the evaluation and selection process to pick the best of the lot, and then groom the hired individuals into roles they are selected to play. Eventually, the success of an individual at an organisation also depends on the opportunities & training after onboarding.

AIM: What is your preference for candidates who have participated in Hackathon vs direct hiring?

PG: Good candidates can be found through many channels. One channel does not undermine the other. Both hackathons and direct hiring have their place and their own benefits.

AIM: Are hackathons replacing the need to have a short-term certification course in areas such as AI, analytics?

PG: I do not think so. Systematic learning has a lot of value. And, so does the practical application of the concepts learnt. Rather than competing with each other, I believe these two complement each other.

AIM: Can you cite partners with whom you usually prefer conducting Hackathons?

PG: At present, we are working with HackerEarth. In the future, we might explore other partners too, depending on the target segment and the kind of participation we seek through a hackathon.

The post Hackathons Help Us Hire Data Scientists With Core Competencies On A Large Scale: Puneet Gupta, HomeLane appeared first on Analytics India Magazine.

The Indian startup ecosystem around analytics, artificial intelligence and machine learning saw significant investments, with startups raising an all-time high capital, registering a 368% growth from 2017. The year 2018 saw Indian startups raising approximately $529.52 million in funding rounds, with investments pouring in from all the important VCs int he country.

To know what 2019 holds for the VC ecosystem and startups at large, Analytics India Magazine got in touch with Manish Singhal, Founding Partner at pi Ventures, an early stage fund focused on investing on disruptive ideas leveraging machine learning, AI and IoT. He shares views on how Indian tech startup landscape has evolved over the years, how is VC industry shaping up in India, why AI startups fail, and more.

Analytics India Magazine: How has India’s startup landscape evolved over the last few years, especially the tech startup space? What are some of the key changes that you witness in the space?

Manish Singhal: India’s startup landscape is coming of age. Three things stand out in the last few years:

1. We are beginning to see IP based global product companies come out of India
2. B2B story for India is becoming stronger. Indian businesses are also willing to buy from Indian product startups which should help the system tremendously
3. Local and global exit options are opening up. We are seeing more and more exits every year. This is a really good sign as it should see the circulation of capital back into innovation

AIM: How was the year 2018 for startups in analytics, AI space? Are you foreseeing a spectacular growth by these startups in the coming years?

MS: AI and analytics, in general, has made good entrenchment in 2018. Entrepreneurs are beginning to take specific deep use cases and are building their companies around it. I think the same trend should continue across sectors in 2019.

AIM: What does the year 2019 hold for VC ecosystem and tech startups in India?

MS: We are experiencing a shift in the investing thesis in the venture capital space – from a market share led thesis, investors are now also looking at IP led product thesis seriously. This should increase funding and support for the tech startups in India.

AIM: How is the Indian VC industry shaping up in India in terms of maturity and the kind of startups that it is investing in?

MS: From its infancy, I would say VC is becoming an industry now in India. In 2018, so many new funds have come up along with the previous ones raising more capital. We are also seeing an emergence of specialized focused thesis among funds, which is also a good sign for the system to mature.

AIM: Investment in AI is happening in specific domains. Can you tell which areas are we going to see VC activity in 2019 or 2020?

MS: I think it will be across sectors. We should see good activity in healthcare, enterprise and fintech.

AIM: India also saw a lot of traction in the financial service sector. How do you see the adoption of AI in this area?

MS: In 2019, we should see more adoption of AI in the financial service sectors. Would like to see more application of AI in deeper areas like non-performing assets (NPA) reduction, loan collections and others apart from the credit modelling/chat bots etc.

AIM: Today most companies like to project themselves as AI companies, despite the fact that they are using AI or not. How important is it for VCs to validate the products that startup is claiming to be working on?

MS: In our view, it is key to understand the differentiation of the startup from a technology standpoint. We often do deep dives from the technology perspective with potential investee companies to make sure we understand what we are backing.

AIM: When it comes to differentiating technologies, how do you separate the hype when being presented with PoCs from cutting edge to bleeding edge?

MS: For us, use cases drive investing decisions. We tend to see how technology is bringing about a 10x difference to the existing way of solving the use case.

AIM: What are some of the cases where you have seen startups fail? What are the underlying reasons for a startup dying at an early age?

MS: There are many reasons why startups fail. One of them which is not much talked about is the ability to get to product-market fit. If startups are focused on solving specific use cases in a differentiated way, a large part of the risk on that path can be mitigated.

AIM: How have been the developments around #ChAI? Tell us about the importance of mobilizing interactions to foster more awareness around deep tech through these sessions.

MS: #chAI is growing stronger. We are doing it every month with good participation from the folks interested in the area.

AIM: Advise for startup founders who have set up a foot in analytics and AI space or are willing to do so?

MS: Focus on solving specific use cases (hopefully large ones) with the help of AI which can create daylight different from the state of the art solution of the same use case.

The post AI Startups Exiting Each Year Is A Good Sign, It Allows Circulation Of Capital For Innovation: Manish Singhal, pi Ventures appeared first on Analytics India Magazine.

In modern workplaces, especially the sector which relies hugely on big data and analytics, hackathons are gaining popularity among organisations. Apart from being used to get a fresh perspective for solving critical problems, companies are also using them to shortlist candidates based on actual performance in a simulated environment. This week, Analytics India Magazine spoke to Srinidhi Rao of TheMathCompany to understand how employers want to look at the manner in which these potential candidates are tackling complicated problems either on their own or as a part of a larger group during hackathons.

Analytics India Magazine: How have hackathons become a crucial part of the hiring process in the data science industry? Do you think spotting talent through hackathons will make this process easier?

Srinidhi Rao: Hackathons are one of the tried-and-tested solutions to bridge the gap between theoretical and practical knowledge. As opposed to traditional methods of candidate evaluation, hackathons simulate a real-world environment for candidates with components like solving real business problems to working in a deadline-based environment. Candidates hired through hackathon have a lower chance of being wrong hires with respect to technical capabilities, considering they would have succeeded in real life problem-solving.

AIM: What is your opinion about online hackathon? Have hackathons replaced the traditional way of hiring, say by campus hiring?

SR: Online hackathons are being used more frequently off-late and are yielding better results than traditional means of hiring. The talent pool available becomes much bigger if the entire process of recruitment is moved online as it reduces the impact of the location constraint. Having said that, we feel that right now, augmenting the existing processes with online hackathons is the best way to go, rather than completely replacing it.

AIM: Hackathons solve two purposes — people strategies and the other being solving use cases in an innovative way. Do you agree?

SR: We agree – hackathons simulate a real work environment to test the salient points of an employee’s behaviour (like working within a deadline, problem-solving mindset), thus helping organisations align the prospective employee’s candidature with their people strategy and their over-arching objective.

Hackathons also provide with an excellent opportunity for organizations to crowdsource innovative ideas for some of the challenging new age problems, thus solving problems innovatively.

AIM: What is the main purpose of conducting a hackathon for you?

SR: The main purpose of conducting a hackathon for us are:

1. Evaluating the problem-solving capability of a candidate using real-world problems in a time-bound situation, thus filtering out candidates based on their technical capabilities
2. Create brand visibility amongst target hiring pool o Branding opportunity to attract the right talent

AIM: Can you cite a recent example where you hosted a hackathon? What was its purpose?

We recently conducted The Triathlon for the graduating year engineering students across the country. The challenge was taken up by 2,200 students from across 6 campuses. The purpose was to identify the best talent from each college. The Triathlon had questions around:

1. Reasoning
2. Decoding
3. Solving a real-world business case study

Top 3 students from each campus were given a direct entry to the final interview round of TheMathCompany.

AIM: How important are hackathons (both internal and external) to boost innovation? Have you and your organisation benefitted from conducting hackathons?

SR: Multiple organizations host periodic hackathons to engage existing employees with a variety of problems and to boost cross-learning across different sets of existing employees. Organizations also prefer hiring an internal candidate for an open position, rather than scout on the market–hackathons are an important way to define the best-fit in those cases. We, as an organization, have benefitted from both, internal (boosting innovation & cross learning) as well as external (finding the right candidate) hackathons.

AIM: Hackathons have become the benchmark for assessing baseline skills? Do you agree, if so what skills? How reliable it is to test skills in the long run?

SR: Hackathons have the potential of becoming a standard way to assess baseline skills like programming and industry knowledge. Hackathons possess an ability to scale in terms of usage in the long run. Collecting data in parallel about the effectiveness of hackathons in creating a narrower hiring funnel will be a major component of this whole growth journey.

AIM: How is hackathon turning into a mainstream hiring requirement?

SR: Hackathons are gaining popularity among organizations to shortlist candidates based on actual performance in a simulated environment. Employers want to look at how candidates tackle complicated problems either on their own or as a part of a larger group (which shows a willingness to work in teams).

AIM: What is your preference for candidates who have participated in hackathon vs direct hiring?

SR: During campus hiring, as the hiring pool is large, hackathons help us filter out the right candidates, who are given a direct entry into the final round, where their behavioural fit with our organization is assessed.

In the case of lateral hires, we do not give any special preference to candidates coming through hackathons as there are other aspects that need to be taken into consideration in a candidate’s profile.

AIM: Are hackathons replacing the need to have short term certification course in areas such as AI, analytics?

SR: We believe that hackathons and short-term certification courses go hand-in-hand. The pool of potential candidates who are moving to the field of data science from other fields is huge. Certification courses allow these candidates to learn various data science concepts in a structured manner. The topics covered in some of these courses are exhaustive and provide a brilliant opportunity for candidates to get started on real-world data science problems. Hackathons assist them in implementing these concepts on-to real-life problems.

AIM: In future, how will hackathons evolve (smaller, online hackathons or the preference will be for offline events)?

SR: We are going to see a combination of online and offline events. Online events will mostly serve as the first round to shortlist the right candidates. Advanced rounds are going to be offline events which will build a better connect between candidates and employers.

AIM: Who are your partners with whom you usually prefer conducting hackathons?

SR: We don’t have any preferred partners for conducting hackathons. We have used the available platforms and created our own custom design of the entire process.

The post Candidates Recruited Through Hackathons Have A Lower Chance Of Being Wrong Hires: TheMathCompany appeared first on Analytics India Magazine.

In our column ‘A Day In The Life Of’, we are trying to step into the shoes of the awesome techies from various organisations who are working in Emerging Tech areas like big data, data analytics, artificial intelligence and the internet of things, among others.

This week Analytics India Magazine decided to talk to Arushi Mishra a consultant at Fractal Analytics, about her life as a dedicated techie who also an anime fan. An alumnus of Meghnad Desai Academy of Economics, Arushi talked to us about her experience of working in a constantly evolving sector.

Describing her true talent as “extracting insights from data” Arushi starts her day at 6.30 AM, digging her way out of the chores to the sound of her favourite tunes. Saying that one of the best things about working at Fractal Analytics was the flexible and “chilled out” work atmosphere, Arushi says, “The focus of our organisation is not how many hours you work, it’s about meeting the deadlines of the project with high-quality work.”

A big fan of morning jogs, DIY projects and the cinema, Arushi admits that her work does end up affecting her personal life — in however small a manner. She explains, “If there is a problem with the data that I cannot resolve at that point of time, or the code fails, I feel the need to stop everything and only focus on the issue at hand. That means stretched working hours, forgetting to eat, stress! However, I get compensated with good sleep and a day off if I manage to resolve the issue. I have a very appreciative and understanding team.”

When asked about what her work consists of, Arushi promptly replies with, “A bit of almost everything!” She explains, “My work consists of data extraction, cleaning, harmonisation, reporting, and providing insight as well as helping the clients by answering the specific business question. We use a lot of different tools like Knime, SQL, R; and visualisation tools like Spotfire and Tableau for dashboarding.”

Arushi is currently working on reporting the FMCG market for the entire APAC region and advising the clients on a go-market strategy based on consumer behaviours and market performance. “We also aim at continuously developing new solutions to automate the processing of data to find insights. There is a lot of focus on learning different skills and techniques throughout the year to keep ourselves accustomed to what’s new in the industry,” she says.

When asked whether her current employers were making full use of her talent, she said, “Fractal Analytics is giving me an opportunity to constantly challenge myself. Although my true expertise is in generating insights. Fractal made me realise how important it is to ensure the quality of data as well as accuracy; how to read data; gain business understanding; understanding the measures available. Once I gain expertise in one kind of skill, I am being tested at a new skill.”

However, Arushi, who is an alumnus of the Meghnad Desai Academy of Economics, does feel like she has more to offer her company. “When it comes to data science and analytics, you can never be at the flatter part of the learning curve. I am yet to show my company how well I deliver insights based on forecasts and machine learning,” she says.

“My goal at the moment is to complete my training in Machine learning. As my background is in Economics and data analytics, I need to gain technical expertise to separate myself from IT experts in my company,” she says, signing off.

The post A Day In The Life Of: Fractal Analytics Techie Who Wants To Marry Economics & Data Science appeared first on Analytics India Magazine.