Defying the Odds: How One Student Overcame Adversity to Excel in Data Science

Today, we had a chance to interact with one of the brightest minds in our Data Science program, who has shown us that if we have the willpower to achieve something, nothing can stop us from achieving it. We are pleased to introduce Prashanth, our BS student, to share his journey and experience of the BS Program and BDM capstone project in particular.

Excerpts

Interviewer: There is a saying that if you have the right mindset and willpower, there is no barrier to achieving anything. Congratulations on that and we’ll start this discussion wherein we are trying to get some insights from your side, get to know you better and spread what you have to say to you know your fellow students and some prospective uh candidates. So, Prashanth, if you can quickly kind of introduce yourself, your family background, and what inspired you to take up the data science course, we’ll start off with that, and we’ll take it forward.

Prashanth: Hello, yes, thank you for the introduction. I’m Prashanth. I’m 20 years old. I’ve completed the foundation course for five years and two years, and I’m now currently pursuing a diploma in data science. I’ve completed MLT, BA, and BDM with an S grade, and in MLF, I got an A grade.

It was an enriching experience to take the course at IIT Madras, and I thoroughly enjoyed it. I’d like to thank the professors, Instructors, and TAs for their guidance and for simplifying and expediting the study. This study requires about four to five hours of studies per day and, I have muscular dystrophy, so I have to do four to five hours of physical therapy, swimming, and Sudarshan kriya, the breathing meditation and barely I study and I’m a wheelchair user as I have limited upper limb mobility activities.

So, I studied at Kalpakam in Atomic Energy Central School and I got 464 out of 500 in my Class 10 CBSE and 478 out of 500 in class 12. My parents are my inspiration and courage; My father stands with me as a pillar of strength, and my mother is through thick and thin. This project is not just about data science but beyond that.

Interviewer: Thank you for that introduction, Prashanth. So, coming to the project, I was given to understand that the entire team had set up a meeting for you and gave you the option to share the secondary data with you, and you said no, that you would be continuing the project like any other student. So, what inspired you to make this decision? A lot of students, when given such an opportunity where something is more easily and readily available, take it, and it’s a general mentality that people take that and want to use that opportunity to get the easy way. What inspired you not to take that and go the hard way? What has been your experience in this BDM project and some challenges that you would have faced right during this project.

Prashanth: Yes, I indeed took the primary data wherein I went I collected the raw data from the site. So firstly, I would like to thank Bharati ma’am for her undulating support and guidance; Dr. Ashwin and Dr. Aadithya sir gave me undulating support throughout the course. This course is beyond me without their guidance. My sincere thanks to the course team for giving me an opportunity to learn something new. During my school days, my project was limited to a few pages of lab report, but this BDM project is a class apart. So I decided to do a project in my township, which is run by a cooperative society. Atomic energy Employees’ Consumer Cooperative Stores.

Yes, this gave me immense happiness to give something back to the society where I was born and brought up, so I approached the stores with my parents. It is a big supermarket with ample car parking and spacious entry, which is easy for me to get in. They also have a ramp for me and disabled-friendly access. I met the Vice President, the manager, and the staff of the stores, and I discussed with them and I understood their operations, their business, and the current financial difficulties which they were facing. and thus, eventually, we formulated the problem statements.

So, standing amidst the vast data and trying to get an insight and finding a way to move forward with the project at hand was indeed quite challenging. The sales data needed to be more organized. They had 30,000 rows in them so I had to clean the data in the first place. There were lots of missing values. Some of the values were zero. Negative values were there. So it did not make sense. So after I cleaned, I had to consolidate those 30,000 rows into 5,000 rows because they had 5,000. They sold around 5,000 products and 5,000 SKUs. I used Excel to consolidate to consolidate. This was the most laborious part of my project, which took me more than a week. It was only after this I could get a glimpse of the data, and I got ideas to do further analysis. For categorization, I took references from online supermarkets.

I used Excel tools like Pivot Table, Graps and V-lookup. I analyzed the revenue, profit, sales, and purchase quantity for each month’s main categories. During my analysis, I found out that the monthly revenue was around INR 32 lakh, and the monthly expenditure was around INR 4,40,000. Whereas the monthly profit earned was just 4 lakh. So there was a deficiency of 40,000. I had to address this. For this I analysed each main category. I drew various graphs and found out whether the capital was used and deployed properly and efficiently. I also found the main categories that had potential to improve. For example, baby care has a very good potential in the township, but it was not doing well. So I analysed. Because the average revenue for the baby care category was just 1% of the total revenue. I also identified three options to improve the business. One is to either increase the profit percent or profit margin. However, this was not possible as it is a welfare-based organization. The other method was to reduce the expenditure which is also not possible. As 85% of the total spending goes towards wages and salary. And I don’t advocate job retrenchment. So, the one-way option was to increase the revenue. So I analysed and found some ideas and suggestions to improve the revenue. The president appreciated me. And they also gave me an appreciation letter.

Interviewer: There are many other challenges you would have faced, such as collecting the data from the cooperative society. There would be some challenges, like organizations being skeptical about sharing the data when it comes to students as they are also not sure if, as students, we are very serious about what we are going to do. Were there any of those kinds of challenges or any roadblocks you hit, or while analyzing the data or when you pitched your suggestions, was it taken, you know, in the first go itself, or was there some resistance from the organization?

Prashanth: There were challenges; even though the entry was easy, it was still not easy to go from the house to the stores frequently. So, I initially went on a Sunday afternoon. So when I could manage the crowd and so I could come in regular contact with the store’s members. The manager was very helpful. He said that he would send the necessary data Via email. I explained the project that I was doing to him, and he helped accordingly with the data I had requested. So I could manage it. My father and parents supported me throughout in getting the data and all the physical work.

Interviewer: This is one question I missed out on asking. How did you learn about the data science course, and what inspired you to particularly enroll in this course?

Prashanth: Yes, I was a very bright student in my 12th year, and I was interested in automobile engineering, automobile designing, to be precise. So, right from my childhood. So I got I got a seat at MIT Chennai and automobile engineering was available. However, due to my physical inabilities, I ,was quite reluctant to, so I could not take the offer and my mother actually came across this course on the internet. So even I analyzed, when I saw the course, and I was very interested. It was fascinating because it is an ever-growing field. Also, it was being offered by a prestigious university like IIT Madras.

Interviewer:

You have your own set of challenges like going to the physiotherapy exercising and everything and then you have the course work. So what keeps you motivated to keep going on and now with the given set of challenges that keeps going and you have been able to do so well in your course and your project.

Prashanth:

Yes, it was challenging to manage both because both are going in opposite directions. Both of them had their own sets of challenges, so managing them to schedule the activities properly was the biggest challenge as time was a major constraint. In all the activities, my parents stood as a rock by my side and encouraged me. I used to plan my timetable with my parents because I needed my father’s assistance for swimming-related activities, and my mother used to help me do physiotherapy.

Interviewer:

Prashanth, what message do you have to give your fellow students or anyone? We generally observe that we give up whenever there is a certain roadblock. Many of us give up, and we will say this is too difficult, and we will not proceed with this. We will focus on trying to solve something else. So what is the message you have to give to your fellow students or to someone who wants to take up this course or to anyone in general?

Prashanth: Everybody is fighting their own battle; they have their own sets of challenges and obstacles. We have to find a way to circumvent those obstacles. Even the word impossible contains the word possible, and we should have a belief in ourselves and our abilities and move forward with hope within. The lord above makes things easier. We should always believe that we can do it and need the best wishes from elders and members of society to move forward and be motivated.

Interviewer:

How has the online experience been? Being from an offline model where you would have met your classmates and interacted with them day in and day out, have you been able to do something similar online among your online classmates and get a chance to interact with people? How has this experience been, say, shifting from an offline course to an online course? I understand that the COVID period helped that transition a bit, but what is your overall experience from an offline course to an online course?

Prashanth:

I was going to school and interacting with and attending class was exciting. But when it was online mode, we had Google Meet classes, so it kind of helped me in bridging the gap between offline and online classes. But even in online degrees, I was able to interact with a lot of friends, like we used to interact through Google Meet. We used to know each other’s names, and even in discourse, we used to interact. Whenever I had a doubt, I used to post, and my friends used to reply, and even if they had a doubt, I used to post it on discourse and clear their doubts. We used to chat in the discourse, and I got their WhatsApp numbers, and we would chat.

Interviewer:

In offline courses, your teachers are always available. You can go to your teachers anytime and get your doubts clarified, but the general perception when it comes to online is that you will have to mail your doubts to the teachers, and then you get a revert over an email from them. How has it been different in the data science program? Have you been able to schedule meetings with your teachers, faculties, or anyone you call a mentor or guide and have that personal connection, which you will probably get only in the offline courses?

Prashanth: Yes, in all the courses, they had at least two sessions. They used to explain the concepts, and even though I had asked a lot of questions, the instructors were beneficial and very kind in answering and clearing all my doubts. There was bonding in the live session, and through discourse, teachers and instructors were available 24/7. Whenever I had a doubt, I used to post it on the discourse, and the TAs used to answer.

Prashanth:

I would like to add that I want to use my data science knowledge to render in direct or indirect service to the Indian defense system because everything, right from missiles to defense everything, is based on machine learning algorithms, so I would look forward to using my machine learning skills in astronomy engineering to serve my country

Interviewer:

Prashanth, thank you for your time and sharing your experience with us. You are an inspiration to each of us. Congratulations on your beautiful project, and all the best for the remainder of your course. Wishing you all the success.