Below is the PGDBA Course Experience shared by Shashank Kumar, a pass-out of the batch of 2015-17.
I was fortunate to be a part of the premiere batch of PGDBA Course, the first graduating batch of ‘17. But this fortune was not without its fair share of trade-offs and leap of faith. The course offered a unique combination of experience in business, statistics and algorithmic computing at IIM Calcutta, ISI Kolkata, and IIT Kharagpur. Being among the most esteemed organizations in these disciplines, this unique concoction was untested in the industry. However, for me, taking such a decision required enough risk appetite in itself, to say the least.
The primary motivation for making this plunge came to me from my withstanding interest in AI and Machine Learning, across specializations like Particle Physics, Complexity Theory, and Computational Neuroscience. During my undergraduate, I did a few projects in Soft Computing, Computational Modeling, Evolutionary Optimization, Control Theory, etc. These projects offered an excellent background and perspective about what I was signing up for. I also kept myself abreast of the recent developments in the field of Deep Neural Networks which were starting to push the limits of what ML algorithms could do. I believe my prior interest in the technical aspects of the field really helped me through the challenging times in the course.
PGDBA Course really throws quite a few curves during the moving stay through the three campuses. Apart from changing the environment, radically different course content, pedagogy and expectations from the instructors, we planned our learnings beyond what was prescribed in the curriculum through electives, audits, additional projects, and online challenges. This was even more important for our batch since we had no clue what a stellar DS/BA profile looked like and what would the prospective employers look for.
What really proved to be a definite source of light out of our ignorance was our regular industry interactions with the behemoths in the domain of analytics like American Express (Amex), Deloitte, PWC, DIAC, ITC, LatentView, Fortis, Mytrah, etc. throughout our coursework. Interactions with senior leaders at these organizations really set the context for the analytics landscape in the industry and correlated with our coursework and relevant experiences. In fact, I would go on to say that these frequent interactions throughout our coursework helped us to see the rapidly transforming space of analytics across multiple industries like finance, consulting, manufacturing, healthcare etc. with such enriched and coherent lens that helped make sense of the state and direction of analytics, even better than many of the practitioners in the industry.
Post completion of my coursework, I was again fortunate to have the association and experience of working at multiple organizations at widely different stages of maturity in analytics. Starting from corporations like Amex and EXL to startups like Zomato and Cars24. Within these organizations I’ve had the opportunity to not only work across varied domains like captive finance, analytics consulting, e-commerce and auto tech, but also, to face and learn from unique set of challenges ranging from strategy analytics, client-facing analytics consulting, backend and tech integrated data science, to building data-enabled products and even setting up a Data Science team.
I would like to give due credit to PGDBA for providing me this opportunity of associating with the best educational brands in the country. Along with this, the PGDBA course also acquainted us with our professors, who gave us enough confidence to venture out in the unknown without hesitation.
I now see each successfully graduating batch behind us is setting even better benchmarks not only in terms of placements but also in terms of performance in external competitions. This course is setting a very solid presence not only in the Indian analytics landscape but all over the world.
I will conclude by a message to all the aspirants who want to build a career in this domain- if you’re determined to follow your passion for data, algorithms, problem-solving, you should be ready to face a brief hustle. This course can set you up for an accelerated entry and growth with its comprehensive coursework, exceptional instructors, elite branding and a network of exceptionally talented alumni.
About Shashank Kumar, PGDBA Course Graduate
Shashank Kumar is an experienced Senior Data Scientist with a demonstrated career history in the automotive industry, e-commerce, finance, and semiconductor design. He is seasoned in end-to-end delivery of data science projects and at scale development, deployment and CI/CD of ML models through cloud-based technologies.
If you need guidance in preparing for admission to PGDBA, you may contact us at info@aimonks.com or read multiple other experiences that such graduates have shared with us here.
Disclaimer: The opinions and views expressed in this post are solely of the author. Neither do these views reflect the opinion of AI Monks now do they bear any responsibility on AI Monks.
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