Dipayan Sarkar
The professors come with an immense knowledge, industry experience, and passion to groom students.
Tell us about your role at Maersk.
I work on advanced analytics at Maersk, to identify and address varied business problems across the organization’s operations worldwide. Since I have joined the team in 2016 I have found it to be rewarding and has made me extremely passionate about Analytics and the role I play in the organization. In fact, I had passed on a position outside Maersk that would be up my wheelhouse in order to continue with this role instead.
What prompted you to move from IT to analytics? How did you make this transition happen?
I saw a growing demand for analytics professionals quite early in 2010, and started preparing on my own. I started working in the field of analytics since 2011. Later when I moved to India in 2014 end, I realized that there are more things to learn and a structured course in analytics would be a good value-add. That’s why I decided to pursue the PGP-BABI course from GLIM.
What did you like the most about the program?
The professors at GLIM were amazing – from their own personal experiences and expertise of the industry they provided me much points to ponder for learning and growth. Special mention to Professors, Dr. PKV, Dr. Bhardwaj and Dr. Vaidy – they all come with an immense knowledge, industry experience and passion to groom students. Sessions on statistical modelling and the business cases used to explain the concepts along with the applications were very useful to showcase how real life applications would work and I definitely use it in my day to day work.
What would be your advice to candidates wanting to transition to the analytics industry?
Passion would be your first stepping stone to build a great foundation. Followed by building strong mathematical foundation, developing an in-depth understanding of concepts and learning key analytics programming languages will go a long way in building your career in the fields of analytics and data science.
Tell us about your journey as a mentor at Great Learning and other educational institutions.
I always try to provide strong conceptual understanding of the techniques and mathematics; to equip students with the practical knowledge used in analytics/data science projects. To teach students new topics and to make my sessions more impactful, I have constantly been upskilling myself from various dimensions, keeping up with the constantly changing world of analytics and data science. There is still so much to be learnt.
What are the most important tools and techniques used in the industry
While this differs from organization to organization, I personally feel that R, Python, Spark are the few important tools that one can learn to gain an edge in the market. One also needs to widen his/her base in Statistical techniques, Machine Learning & Deep Learning.