Data Science is constantly growing. Upskilling in this domain can prove to be extremely beneficial. Read further to learn about Patrick Priyadharshan’s journey with Great Learning’s PGP Data Science and Business Analytics Course in his own words.
I currently work with Valeo India Pvt, Ltd as a Data Scientist. I completed my BE in Mechanical Engineering from Loyola ICAM College of Engineering and Technology in 2018. I started my career as an Intern at Valeo India Pvt. Ltd and in January 2019 I got promoted as Graduate Engineer Trainee.
I was likely to pursue an MBA after gaining a solid work experience. The reason for me aligning my thought towards MBA was to possess proven leadership qualities. I was the president of my department’s student body and organized symposiums, international conferences and many such events. I was in charge of the department newsletter team where successfully 8 quarterly editions were issues which were full of content and engagement. I always believed I could perform over the horizon in the management and administration side and thus MBA.
While I was doing ground study of various MBA courses and opportunities I felt there was a strong trend as many BE graduates come out to pursue MBA. It was so common that 4 in 10 people with BE degrees have moved to do an MBA degree in recent times. I took a pause and started to think about it as the market is already flooded with similar people and eventually there wouldn’t be anything challenging and new.
I started looking for various opportunities, and suddenly analytics stuck my sight. Business Analytics and Business Intelligence seemed to be a good blend of analytics and business application. As data becoming the new oil of the century and data science picking up momentum, I thought it would be a decent choice to be in the management side with analytical skills rather than a pure management guy. I would also have a couple of options as I can either dive into Analytics / Data science kind of activities. I started looking for the scope of a mechanical engineer taking up such a novel stream where many from the same background haven’t. After enough research and thinking I finally decided to take up this challenge.
The need to take up this challenge is to adapt the changing market and to be ready for the future. As data science is picking up its momentum, there are very few mechanical engineers with good analytical and data science skills in India. As we are moving towards electrification and autonomous driving, I hope data science and analytics will definitely play a huge role.
It was a very good opportunity when I was offered an admission at GL for DSBA. I would say it was only because I got a place at GL I was successfully able to transition to this field. The biggest professional challenge was to bridge the gap between mechanical engineering and analytics. The most important was coding skills which I was very poor at the beginning. The curriculum that GL has drafted is amazing that it takes through it completely to make you comfortable in understanding the concepts and to acquire skills.
The methodology followed by GL was amazing. Every professor was exceptional in their part. GL has been extremely disciplined in choosing the right professor for the course. They were able to make the people from non analytical backgrounds understand the concepts and have it like a cake. I couldn’t mention a particular professor but Dr. PKV is a role model for everyone. The simplicity in his teaching and his experience helped us to learn statistics in a very better way. Similarly Dr. Abhinandha Sarkar who was our Time series professor, one who created interest in the subject.
The guidance provided by the mentors were really important as they played a pivotal role in helping us to gain hands-on experience in the concepts. The capstone projects were the highlight of the course. It was the time where we had to think of a problem statement on our own and come up with a solution. Right from identifying the problem statement, collecting data and finally arriving at a solution, it has taught us the real workflow of analytics. It helped us to understand the importance of each process and each stage in analytics. Capstone was such a great experience where we had free hands to apply anything that we learnt during the course. Professor PVS who was our mentor played an important role in our learning path.
For the people who are looking for the transition, I would say please have a clear thought on why you are looking for the transition. If you are really passionate in analytics and ready to walk an extra mile then it is all yours. Be ready to put efforts every now and then. Consistency is the key and constant learning is the way to success.
For more such success stories, watch this space.
