An Interview with a Machine Learning Leader

Kalpit Desai, Co-founder and Chief Data Scientist of Datakalp had a passion towards Data Science and Entrepreneurship. He has more than 15 yrs of experience with delivering the promise of Machine Learning various industry segments. He identified that India has a great, yet untapped, potential to benefit from the AI revolution and that is what drove him to start Datakalp.

Datakalp is expert in ML for Industry 4.0, IoT sensors intelligence, Computer Vision, Image Processing, Text Mining and Statistical Optimization. The Company provides Machine Learning services like taking ML projects on contract, draft data & ML strategy for an organization, provide ML consultation and coaching etc. The company is actively engaged with clients in multiple verticals – Defense, Manufacturing, Healthcare, Energy, Retail, E-commerce, Media, EdTech.

1. What kind of Challenges you face while hiring an Entry Level Talent?
   The major Challenge faced is how to judge the Aptitude and Intuition of a candidate for data. This is important because based on this a person will grow into the Company. It is difficult to evaluate within the constraints of the hiring process. So, Experienced professionals are required mainly for Startups.
   
2. Do you provide Internships or Live Projects?
   We provide Internships which may be for 3-6 months. In fact, the Internship is our preferred route to onboard Entry-Level talent because it gives the candidate as well as the Company sufficient time to evaluate the fitment.
   
3. What is the Skill set required to be in the field of Analytics?
   Mathematics is important and one should not be afraid of it. Problem solving Skills are necessary which can help one stand out from the crowd. Individuals should have Intuition and High level of curiosity to Exploring data and mine insights visually. One should be willing to study depths of  Machine Learning Algorithms.
   
4. Do you think Non Engineers can perform well in Analytics?
   Yes definitely as long as they have Analytical bent of mind and great comfort with Programming. I have even come across commerce graduates who became  Excellent Programmers and then transitioned into Data Science and Analytics very successfully.
   
5. Do you think Certifications and Online Courses help?
   The value of such Online Courses varies from Person to Person and from Course to Course. The person has to look at the course as purely a ‘Learning’ Exercise and not focus on ‘Certification’. The course should have at least 50% time on hands-on projects on real data solving practical problems.
   
6. Can you share about any interesting project of your Company?
   Our Clients are into Logistics, Media, Indian Defence and many more. One of the Projects for which we are Awarded a grant from Defense is detecting deviations of an Aircraft from its designated path in real time, so that root cause can be Identified and Corrective actions can be taken.