Turbocharge Your Career with AI/ML Expertise

Hi, everyone. Good evening, just waiting for more people to join in. I think he read started now. Thank you, everyone for joining us today. It's, it's a Wednesday evening, thank you for taking time out of what we have planned for you is. I mean, while the topic is over here we have we all also been joined by one of our program alumni, manmeet Bhatia. And he will talk about his experience of the program and we generally going to be talking a little bit about AI ml. Now, it's the agenda is here on the screen it. I mean, we don't need to probably sell AI as a concept because most of us are aware of it. We are in the webinar to talk to us, because we kind of understand the importance for AI and hence we are here, but what we're going to do is that, just some data around it, and I'm also going to try to A little bit about the program, talk a little bit about some of the misconceptions or some of the feedback that we receive as a part of this program. And as a part of the all the other programs that talentsprint has, most of our programs have a very, you know, deep connection with deep tech, deep learning, etc. So, those are some of the things that I would want to cover, we will have a question and answer session for all the people who you can interact with me and me as a part of the session, and you know, we'll try and answer all of your questions. I have a short presentation, I'll focus more on the interaction with manita. Because he he has been a he's a veteran industry, he had long exposure to this and, you know, his perspectives, I'm sure will add a lot of value in terms of the things that you would want to do My name is Arturo, I am the Senior Director for sales at talentsprint. All my life I have been facilitating professionals towards acquiring new competencies be eight while they are working did in terms of MBA, so before I joined talentsprint I was with the Indian School of Business where I led the admissions for the one year PGP program. Before that I have worked with Pearson, again in training, development, upscaling of people. So that's that's my core competency in terms of understanding how we can go ahead and upskill human capital money. He is currently a senior manager and a delivery senior manager delivery data science at Microsoft. He I'm gonna ask him to introduce himself in a couple of minutes during the presentation, and he's going to be talking about his journey, his experience With the program and about the industry as a whole, and then we are going going to go ahead with the q&a. While we are doing this, it's important to understand the the company and what talentsprint represents as a whole and what we have been doing to help professionals upskill themselves. So talentsprint is an ad tech company that is around 10 years old now we work with top academic institutions in the country to help working professionals like you upskill yourselves. So we work with Indian Institute of Science, for example, there is a program on digital health an imaging. There are two programs of three programs and so to speak with I am Calcutta. One is a program for FinTech professionals. One is for AI in marketing. Then there's a program which is coming up on economics, on global economics and future of money with them. We weren't Whether it can put on a cybersecurity program and we been working with triple it hydrobath the oldest amongst all the triple IDs in the country to deliver two programs, one is the AML program for which we are all here and we also are have the blockchain program with triple it hydrobath. So, all of these programs primarily target working professionals, people who want to upskill themselves while they are working motives behind doing that is to upskill themselves to go ahead, change a job, get a promotion, continue to be relevant in the industry that they are in. So these are broadly the reasons why professionals come to us and most cases what we have seen is that we are a choice for serious professionals who want to get a great learning experience in the programs that they are in, so most people choose That's because of this. We have the programs. I'm going to be talking a little bit about that as we go on. But we don't only limit ourselves to working with professionals, we we partner with top blue chip global corporations, which and they look to us to help augment their talent supply. So you have Google we have. There's a program that we run with Google for Women Engineers, we work with pega, systems automation anywhere blue prism, on RPA. There's the pega University program that they reach out to undergraduates to kind of build up a pipeline of people who will be competent at working on the pega systems. So we work with both professionals, working professionals as well as the undergraduate population in terms of building up their competencies in the tech space. Now, ya know, most of us are aware that AI is everywhere, etc, etc. There's just some of the in terms of opportunities. While most of us think that he is there, just want to quantify some of it, in terms of, you know, what we have been seen, there are so many studies that are there, you know, every day is something that's coming up, if you look at it, Ai, there's a huge gap in terms of the skills that are needed by the industry. And you know, I'm going to be talking to my knees about that as well and what we can, you know, what we as working professionals, in terms of the competencies that we are able to bring to the table, so there is this huge need, and there's this huge gap in terms of professionals being able to fulfill that need, and that's where it's part of it is probably in the fact that a lot of undergraduates when you're graduating out of your colleges, etc. You are not industry ready. I mean, this is also nothing new that I'm talking about this In so many studies that are there.

And it's very difficult to get into these full time programs at these top tier institutions. So for examples that I took, it's really very difficult to get into the flagship programs that they have you would want to get in the seats are barely few. And we have lakhs of people who want to aspire to get in. Now, what do you do over there, the best choice for you to do is that you get into these executive programs that are there, which they have designed, and you get the same kind of learning experience, you get the same faculty teaching you, you have the same program DMA, which is coming in from the core programs into this program. And you could do that the advantage of doing this is that you can do that in a much easier case, you don't have to go through the rigors of getting in, you know, passing difficult tests and getting in the filtration criteria, it's a lot easier. So that's why a majority of what Professionals that's why even a majority of students after they pass out of college, they come to organizations like us to help equip them with competencies and skills which they will be able to use up. Now thanks to this pandemic, we none of us wanted it and I and I wish that it gets over very soon. But then it still some time we there's still a lot of uncertainty around it. The the coronavirus pandemic has just meant that the growth in AI usage of AI has exploded. Be trying to find cures for this pandemic beat in other things we've we've moved into platforms which we have never used which are powered by AI audio zomato there's deep learning machine learning going into that the Amazons of the world the Flipkart of the world, we are using them extensively. What does that mean for you What that means is that for professionals eight there is a huge need for the professionals who are competent and who can deliver working for these companies yet there's the skill gap. So the pandemic and one of the things that there's been a lot of research around it. One of the research that has come out is that while you know what you're seeing on the screen is there in current times, AI is amongst the few sectors jobs in AI is amongst the few sectors that has not been affected by the pandemic. If so, it has increased a majority of the companies it was anyway happening thanks to the downturn thanks to AI coming in. across sectors you have most companies rescaling themselves looking for people who have competencies in deep learning deep tech, Ai, ml, and all of that. So people and companies some of them was sponsoring but then a lot of bandwidth is still there, companies cannot sponsor everybody. And you need to go ahead and upskill yourself if you are to continue to live relevant. So not everybody has the luxury of waiting for their company to sponsor thanks to Coronavirus Now, a lot of pink slips have been you know being handed out by people who have these deep tech knowledge who have skilled in AI ml their jobs were not at risk because this is a face this is a this is a sector in the IT industry where jobs are there people there is still so much demand and people aren't available. The export pool if we were to look at it, I mean, there's just some conservative estimates from a couple of studies that we have been do you look at the global expertise pool and the India expertise pool is is is miniscule that is there and there is the export pool and the expertise pool also is tiny. So, if we were to take this DD, current scenario that is there we can do so much more DB opportunities that are there for us are mind boggling. I this is an economic time study came out a couple of I think sometime during April this year. Right during the pandemic, when you know, we are entering that we had 50,000 plus jobs in India, I'm not even getting into what is available globally. There were jobs that were open that were that we were looking for people and companies did not get it and in the number of job postings, this was an old study. This was one and a half year old study. But the fact of the matter is the number of job postings open offers that are there have actually quadrupled. And this is a global job posting data that was there. But that has quadrupled. And you have more than 50,000 plus jobs which could go What is the future? This was a study I think sometime late last year, which was done by Gartner which says that around 2.3 million between lakh jobs in the world will get created by 2022. And at that point and COVID did not hit us the the, the predictions for current predictions which are coming in, predict that the number this number is going to go up manifold because there are new sectors bad jobs are available in the industry, and you have people who will be able to, you know, you meet many people, the industry needs people who can deliver. So, these are some of the findings below that I wanted to kind of talk a little bit about. What I'm now going to do is I'm going to talk a little bit about how professionals have been building their expertise with us. The AML program itself has had more than 2300 professionals who have passed through this program. And they they are and what is it that they were looking for in a program And while I'm going to be doing this, since money has joined us, I am going to request Money, money, would you want to give us a small introduction about yourself, I would want you to weigh in on these aspects because you know, you have gone through the entire program. No one would know this better than, you know you. So money in terms of can you just give us a small introduction about yourself? What's your journey been like? And, you know, and then we'll take the discussion forward.

Sure, a retro, I'm trying to switch on my video. Let me see. So it says you cannot start your video. So, let me just take care of that.

You can start the introduction I will get

so you know, so quickly to you know, introduce myself. My background is More on the management side. So I graduated from I am Calcutta in 2000. And at that time, it was new. And my initial interest was mostly in fmcg organization because that used to be your first choice of jobs when you will graduate from an MBA college and in fact, I got a job in an fmcg organization. But at that point of time, you know, there was something magical happening in the IT area, specifically an area called data warehousing and business intelligence. And I decided to let go of that first choice of fmcg organization and thought that let me jump into this new area of data and business intelligence at that time. So, from then on my journey with data has started. And you know, it has morphed into different roles, different kinds of organizations. So I've worked with, you know, initial advanced analytics. I've been a consultant and architect. I've been in the US consulting very large fortune 500 organizations. And then over a period of time, obviously things improve and morph into more advanced tools. And somewhere in 2014. things move from more data to big data and AI and machine learning for me. And in last six years, I have spent most of my time in the field of AI and at this moment, I lead a team of data scientists within Microsoft consulting services and We work with large fortune 500 Enterprise organization trying to solve their very difficult digital transformation problems. And it has been a very interesting journey. And this course has been very, very instrumental in improving the way you know, I've been doing my job.

Well, thank you so much money. You can try me by showing you a video. I think the problem has been sorted.

Okay, let me try.

Yeah. What can you perfectly thank you? Yeah,

so I my photograph was at least six, seven years old and 15 kgs heavier. So I'm the same person. I just want to let everyone know.

It's good to see fitnesses is a very good mantra to have. So while we increase our knowledge, it's also important to take care of our health especially, you know in the current situation, We are in. So Excellent. So so that's the introduction of money to what I'm going to do is I'm going to be bringing him on and off during this part of it. So I have this slide that is there. So we had done this poll a couple of weeks back. And we asked during one of our live sessions had some around 200 300 people, what is it that you look for when you search for a deep tech program? Now, and these are the top four things that we got as a result of that that it is a program which is suppose which is tailor made for professionals need and there should be a lot of focus on the group work and on hands on experience and group work that is there. The lab exercises should be tailor made to solving real life problems and the peer group effect to be Which are the peer group the better. So, all in all, what we saw was that people want to get into a program where the if I were to, you know, utilize us here, Tom, it's a practitioners curriculum, right? Somebody who's already practicing this is all very real world, examples of things. So people, professionals look for very practical hands on approach when they want to learn from a program. Now the good thing and honestly speaking, it was very good news for us because our program, if you look at the triple it hydrobath program, the AML program that we have, is has been designed with this in mind. So this exercise kind of reinforced our thought process behind selecting this program, and the kind of case studies be everything and I am going to bring in money over here as well. Again, and kind of asked him about the experience that he had when he was one to two things. One, one meter is what got you to choosing this program? And the second thing is that can you talk a little bit about the curriculum about what you have what used to normally happen in these sessions, when you were a student of this program in this program,

okay. So, let me try to address the first question. So, why I got into this program? So, see, I have been in this area for almost six years, but again, you know, there was a need to refresh my knowledge, because a lot of things are changing quite fast in even in AI and ml field, so whatever knowledge I gained at the beginning in 2014 15, was based on what was relevant at that point, and we were using mostly our And lots of work, which we were doing was your traditional machine learning. But then I realized that more and more work which might team was doing was becoming more, you know, quite advanced in nature. So we were working in neural networks, we were working in computer vision, natural language processing. So all those areas while I was trying to read about it or self train online, somehow I felt that there was a gap and I was not having such a great conversation with my team, as well as with my clients. So I thought, let me refresh my knowledge because things have changed. So I started looking out for different programs. So Incidentally, I had a team member in my team who did this triple it and talentsprint program and he you know, gave me a Very positive feedback that this is a program which probably caters to a variety of people. You know, it looks at people like us who want to understand the concepts and have a good conversation and become conceptually stronger, and also caters to people who really want to start on the hands on journey of building their own algorithms, getting their hands dirty with Python. So, I evaluated all other programs plus you know, the best part was that it was not a long standing two year three year kind of program because I wanted something which will get me that knowledge and get me started within three to four months or in that vicinity. So after evaluating all those parameters, and after

you know, discussing with my family that, you know, I need to dedicate myself on this program for just these three, four months, I decided to take this up. So I think it takes all the necessary parameters for me in terms of selecting this program, and then what goes on in this program? You know, the second part of your question, I think, the, the interesting part was that there was a lot of focus on concepts which came from these esteemed professors, you know, who will, who were taking the lectures. And that was so relevant because, you know, you will find a lot of people giving you methods to use these algorithms, and probably run these algorithms get the results, but if your foundation is very strong, and If you understand what goes on behind the scene, it is very difficult to forget whatever learning you have had. So, I think a lot of initial time was spent on concepts. And when it started, we kept thinking, you know, why are they spending so much time on gradient descent, you know, there have been two classes on gradient descent. And then we realized that you know, how fundamental it is for the neural networks and all the deep learning classes which are going to follow. So, the focus on concepts was very high, and professors were very open spending a lot of time on concepts. So that really helped. Then, secondly, there were quite a few hackathons, in fact, for us every second week We had a hackathon, which means that whatever we were learning in our classes, through concepts and whatever, machine learning and AI concepts we were learning, we got an opportunity to immediately apply it in near real life problems as a group. So you learn for a couple of weeks, you understand the concepts, you play around with some sheets, and then, you know, every second week, you're actually, you know, participating in those hackathons and building something. So that reinforced all the learning, which we built over two weeks, and that's how we kept on developing and over, you know, 1012 weeks, we didn't realize that when we started becoming quite comfortable with very difficult concepts of AI and ml, we started hand coding some of the neural net Books. So yeah, that's how the whole journey went for us.

Absolutely. A very interesting, you know, fit within and the fact of the matter is any there have been enough studies, I'll just say that most cases by me, it's it's acceptable that a person who is in the IT industry, I mean, every two to three years, he or she needs to upskill themselves. That's, I think, very acceptable. Do you think that that's true? Or is it like longer than that? Is it shorter than

that? No, I think every few years is relevant now, because the pace at which the innovation is happening has really increased. So if I go back to my earlier career, which was bi and data warehousing, I used to see that every four or five years you know, there will be something new which will come in a parallel data warehouses and then new ways of doing bi All those things, but now, things are changing at a much faster pace Plus, there is a lot of open source contribution which is accelerating this change. So I believe, you know, every couple of years is something which is correct. We cannot wait for for five years to refresh our knowledge. And, in fact, through this course, you know, I realized that not only what was happening today, okay. I also got some foresight that what is expected in next six months to one year so that's, that was the fabulous part. That things like you know, model pruning, which people were thinking you know, lighter models, all those concepts which are just starting, we got a preview of the research work which is happening and triple it and Some of the larger organizations,

excellent guess that's that's, that's the entire that's the fun of it probably, in terms of it helps you upskill yourselves a lot more. So the program, it's just around 2300 people have passed out of this program. Triple IIT Hyderabad is the oldest priority in the country. And it's the number one when it comes to ranking in terms of computer science research competency. 13 cohorts have completed for the program, the 14th one is underway. The great thing about the program and I'm going to talk a little bit about the participant profile over here, it will give you some idea of, you know, the kind of people who come in 750 plus companies have been represented in these 13 cohorts. majority of the people have more than five plus years of experience and Around 19% of them have been women, a lot of people have passed out of the program from who are coming in from startups and from smaller companies. The great thing about our program is the fact that 96% of everybody who enrolls completes the program and a net promoter score, I would request all of you to go online and search for this net promoter score this concept of net promoter score, and understand of what it means. So we just to give you an idea of a net promoter score of 75 is extremely high. In terms in the education industry, there is probably you know, there aren't too many companies, global companies that even have a net promoter score which is as high as this. So it means that people are extremely satisfied with the program. They are extremely satisfied with the kind of learning with the concepts that are covered with the hackathons with the kind of group that they get with the kind of support that they get and the value that they derive out of the program. So that's something that is very high, which means that people get a lot out of the program. Monday, would you agree with the fact that you know, this, this, you know, the completion parts of it? I'm sure you are. Are you still in touch with your alumni group with the peer group that you had in your class?

Yes, in fact,

we have two WhatsApp groups. One whatsapp group is the larger whatsapp group, which included all the people in almost all the people who were there in that cohort, and we keep interacting in terms of, you know, what is happening knew what people are doing in their program. So initially, that group was created to alert everyone about the attendance, but that was only during the program. But later on, you know, it became a great place to be Here's, you know, what people are doing and what people are learning. And then we have a second group, which was my hackathon group. Now you that hackathon group becomes like your family, because you closely do close to six or seven hackathons together. And it had, you know, that group had a lot of variety in terms of some were very good coders, some came from business background, some were very good at problem solving or finding issues. So that group really gel very well. And we we still, you know, talk to each other many times discuss about what people are doing in their respective work. So yeah, so we had an amazing peer group coming from best of the best organization coming from different background and as a team, we really enjoy You're working in those hackathons and the whole program,

fill up by groups to ask you about the peer group interactions, you kind of answered the entire thing. One thing that is there is a lot of people also if you look at the experience profile, the peer group is something which is very important because it is true for any form of learning whether you are going through the traditional formal learning in your class, especially higher education, or professional learning, so to speak, wherein, you know, you're envious of the world or these kinds of programs upskilling programs where you need people with a varied points of view to add more value to you. So if you look at it a majority experience profile if I were to put it over here, 10 plus years of experience, around 42% of these 2300 people have been doing it. So it's a very good mix. Like when we said of people who bring in, you know, industry expertise will bring in coding who can who've been in the management side of things as well. Understanding And then problem solving. So what you what it also helps is that while you have the group's you also have, you know, the the alumni network, the whole alumni network as a whole we have a D platform, which enables you the there is something called the Alma Connect where you can actually connect with any of the alumni across all of the cohorts that are there and the cohorts and come in the future. That's something that will allow you to talk to people to mingle with people get help from people. If you you know, if you have some idea that is there, I'm sure you will have people not only your own cohort, they will probably be the first people that you would go to but the larger community that's there in talentsprint in the alumni community if you if you have some idea I'm sure you will be able to get some help. I'm you know, this is a long list laundry list is more than 750 companies, like I said, Just wanted to put in some names, probably could have done a better job. So head, which I showed it, but yes, it's a long list of companies. We are already anyway doing the alumni interaction part. So what I'm going to do right now is that so this is the program, it's a six month long program. The program starts in the desert to cohort that starting in the month of end of August. And we are accepting, you know, applications for the program. The program is a six month program. Now, we kind of tweaked the program a little bit to make it more relevant for the current time. So the time period has increased and we got so that's one change that has happened since the time that mommy has done it, is that we've gotten some feedback saying that the the classes which he did when we did a Saturday class, and I think a Sunday hackathon that was Sunday class and a hackathon that was I think, the year

Yes, Saturday class and you know, So alternate weekends, one and half day classes. And then every second weekend, Sunday used to be hacked.

Yeah, absolutely. So that's been changed a little bit because we got some feedback from and we're very open to, you know, feedback that we get from the program participants when they said that, you know, it, it would be a little easier for them to work. If we were to spread it out a little bit. So the current program, the current version of the program is going to start at the end of August is going to be a six month long program, which will give you a little bit of a breathing space without any way diluting the good the quality aspects of the program or the kind of exercises, the peer group all of that will continue to be happen. But it's just it's really spread out. So that's something that's there. Also, Monday I would want to, you know, talk to you a little bit about your you're in the sector right now. You're working you're in Microsoft. You've been Therefore, I'm six years of age, we all know about the what is it that you are seeing in terms of the market in terms of you know, the future what will happen? MLS is here. So, what is your reading of bureau job opportunities that people have or new opportunities that AI could open up, which could help you know, all the attendees who are here and they could also be a part of, you know, this entire journey.

Okay, so, a retro I, I have viewed to at least you know, two areas where I see a lot of demand of AI ml. So if you look at Microsoft, you know, we have the product side of the world, you know, we have a lot of products which are being developed. And then we are also in the forefront of enabling a lot of customers in their digital transformation journey, you know, your top fortune 500 who are going through this massive digital trend. formation. So, if you look at the product side of things, a lot of these product companies are trying to embed AI into their products okay because what they want is that the whole user experience for their products should happen in such a manner that the AI should assist the end users in throughout their journey which means that there are tons and tons of you know, ai getting embedded in these products and this is I believe, a phenomenon not only for Microsoft, I interact with a lot of other product managers across different organization. I think every large product organization is looking at building some kind of an embedded AI into their products. So that is creating a huge demand. Okay. And secondly, when you go to the consulting side of the world where, you know, you look at these enterprise five of your fortune 500 organizations, the large enterprises, they, most of them are going through this digital transformation journey because we are at the right time at the right moment considering the amount of data being generated considering the cloud computing which has come in which has made a lot of AI possible which was not possible earlier. And so many tools being developed open source contribution, so, it's like a perfect storm, you know, a perfect situation for AI across these fortune 500 organization and with competition increasing with the pressure coming from situations like COVID-19 there is a tremendous amount of acceleration in these organization to Start looking at AI ml work as part of their digital transformation journey. So, yeah, on both the sides, I see you know, good amount of demand.

Absolutely. You brought up overdyed kind of reminds me there is. So we we talk to, you know, thousands of people every day hundreds of thousands of people have been a year who want to do upskill themselves. One of the common questions that we are getting is your thanks to the pandemic, or a lot of them are in two minds about you know, whether or not I do this or whether I wait for things to get better. What's your take on this? Is it is it a good time for people to, you know, upskill themselves in the midst of a pandemic.

I think this is a perfect time to upskill yourself, okay. And my reason is That, you know, this pandemic has forced us to be locked in our houses okay. And but it has also freed up a lot of time which used to go in going to office and probably getting ready and you know a lot of stuff you are able to extract at least two to three hours extra every day and probably be at the similar level of productivity which you would have been, you know, pre COVID-19 era. So, utilize this time because I see it going away in next three, four months or probably six months and take full advantage. Secondly, this situation has also you know, brought in some massive changes in the way organizations are thinking, Okay, and adoption of AI specific In the way organizations manage risk, they manage their supply chain because number of human beings now available for doing the supply chain have come down. So, how do you automate? There are so many use cases coming then you know there are things which are going on and pharma and healthcare. So, this is also changing the industry where the AI adoption is increasing. So, I think this is a very good time given that there is some time available and this COVID-19 situation is bringing in higher AI ml adoption. So, this seems to be a good time for training training. So,

and also there is there's always this question which is which is a bit I want you to weigh in on this. People, a lot of companies now you know, people are waiting for their companies to sponsor in terms of What's your take on this? But I have a very, you know, I have a view on this, which I'm going to kind of articulate but what's your take on should people wait for their company to sponsor them or is it you know, is it better to go ahead and get yourself upscaled

at this moment?

So, I will give you an honest answer I, I made a sincere attempt to get my company to sponsor it, okay, I made a very sincere attempt, but then larger organization have some fixed policies. So, there are certain requirements, which I was not able to meet. And I was very specific about this course because of, as I mentioned earlier, it takes many of those boxes in terms of good concepts, good interaction, you know, very good professors, that timeline which was much shorter. So, You know, I decided that I will not, you know, look for a course that fits organization policy, but I will go with this course. And if required, you know, I'll go for self funding. So that's exactly what I did. Because in the larger scheme of things, you know, I believe the impact is much larger than worrying about, you know, this amount at this moment. So, based on that, you know, I, after my sincere attempt, when it was not successful, I went ahead for self funding

to pay I love the honest answer will be thank you so much for that. And yeah, that's something that we've also been, you know, seeing a lot of people, they are in this dilemma. One thing that I would say is, and we're gonna get into the q&a part of this after this, is the fact that, you know, if you're waiting for your company to sponsor you, you probably probably going to be not be able to get that at the moment but that should not stop your learning because you should understand something like when we said before, it's very important for us to upskill ourselves and the people if you have been looking if you've been following what has been happening in the market, people are losing jobs because probably they are working on something which is outdated or or which where they are replaceable, if you are working or if you have the competencies in cutting edge D tech, which companies could use, you are much less likely to be in the in the firing line, so to speak. So, it is very important that we go ahead and proactively build these skills instead of waiting for something to happen and that could take a long while and companies will not upskill their entire you know there are lakhs of big companies in India have lakhs of people who are on their rolls. So it will not be possible. So if you're waiting for something, if you're waiting for that right time to happen, there's obviously a lot of there's some risk involved in it. But you should look at this as an investment in yourself. And you will be able to recoup if, if you were to concentrate on building up the competencies, you will be able to recoup that in the future, in terms of the kind of projects that you get the jobs and all of that will follow but it's important that you not wait for the right time or wait for somebody, you know, the company to do it. If you're getting it, you know, nothing like that. But be proactive and get the skills first, you know, a new job can follow promotions will follow stuff like that. So that's one thing which I thought I will bring up over here because we do get a lot of these questions right now. And we also have a lot of these I think a couple of questions I'm seeing in the chat window which have started flowing in. We are open for questions, we will have the next 10 or 12 minutes. We'll take questions from you, you can raise your hand, I can unmute you if you want to. And I can or I will take the questions. I'll start off with the questions that I'm getting on the chat window, and then we can go ahead and do so, automotive, so, this is a question from Shane who he has 20 years of experience in design and development experience in mechanical industries, automotive, industrial products, aerospace, etc. How will this program be useful for him to switch over from his feet to you know, accompany or on maybe I would probably word this in a way that there could be many opportunities. There are many opportunities that are there in the automotive sector, aerospace, which are utilizing AI ml. Monica, do you want to talk a little bit about what you know the the opportunities that he could have seen you could have if you Want to do this program?

So if you, as you rightly mentioned, our intro, you know, every industry will have a lot of opportunities of AI to be implemented. In fact, no, I have a lot of customers in that space. And I'll tell you, you know, there are certain roles which are very, very valuable when I go to those organization and talk to senior executives and business stakeholders. And I am looking for those key stakeholders who are in the cusp of understanding that business and also have good understanding of data sciences. Okay. So those are the key guys who are always there as part of that combined team which we create for implementing these large digital transformation. So if you already have great domain knowledge and now if you complement it with you know your concepts of AI ml, suddenly you will start seeing your own work with a very different pair of glasses, okay, you will start seeing use cases opportunities around you. And whenever there is an opportunity where the organization decides to implement some AI ml program, I bet you will be one of those key members included because you understand both the sides, you know, and these these roles are very, very valuable. And in fact, if you're really motivated after you do these courses, you go ahead and meet your management and say that, you know, these are the opportunities I see these are the benefits we can bring in which can be in thousands of dollars or millions of dollars and create a case and you know, start implementing it take take ownership, so, but it will only happen if you understand how AI ml can be applied and can be useful. So I see, you know that as a big opportunity of applying it in your own domain.

Absolutely. So we have bushing was raised his hand Bhushan, you can unmute your mic and you can ask us the question that you want to

motion. Are you dead? I see that you've muted your mic, but we can't hear you.

We'll try and help. We'll try and wait for you to fix this. Meanwhile, I see a hand from Robbie as well. Robbie, I've unmuted you. I will, you can ask your question.

Hi, thank you. Thank you, sir. So yeah, the first thing which I say like

extended hours extension of two months it's a really great because earlier I think it was four months later, I feel it is a very legal issue like because I am from a data system engineer the ground and I do carry BSc as mathematics as one of the special license subjects. So I always confused with one thing, but I have a research, I have a dream to do a research in future. So I always think to go Go head for mTOR program versus this, this short term courses and and that's the reason I always end up with

with a confusion and not doing anything from last one year. But I did a lot of research. So can you assist on this? coming to my profile experience? I have 12 plus years of experience. And I started my career as a BA developer. As money at pension I'm not from I'm not a I am pleasured, but I'm doing from last 12 years, the big the big data, the cloud, all the flavors. And I'm working currently as a data system engineer for one of the telecom product company.

Okay and Robbie, if I understand the question correctly, you intend to get into the research. And yeah, so yeah, I want to do research in future you want to know how this program will help you with research? Right. Or what is the exact question? Yeah.

Yeah. So research is my

core goal, may be after three years. So the PST and the I have decided that I will be doing something in deep learning or a part but I'm targeting big Institute like IIT Hyderabad. And so they encouraged for MTech program, but before that, if I have this course, this kind of short term course On my profile or getting into that program chances will be increase and I can this this sort of course as you mentioned, this will give immediate boost or to work something in within my organization to do something in the data science area.

And see my point of view is

it will, so, you need to treat this course as a starting point. Okay. See, this area of AI ml is huge, okay, it's like a massive universe and there are at least 50 or hundred different things you can do research on okay. So, if I am in your place, I will probably look at this course which gives me within six months, a very broad picture of you know, what is possible in all the areas which are covered what is the aligned with my passion, what is aligned with my strengths at this moment, and then I can pick up that area where I want to do research because at this moment, you may not have all the information and I'll relate it to my stuff. For example, at the end of this course, I, you know, we decided, you know, as a team that we will focus on these two areas, you know, which was mostly around computer vision and natural language processing, and, you know, based on various parameters. Now, I couldn't have taken that informed decision for myself or my team if I didn't get such a good broad view and, you know, conceptual knowledge. So I'll treat this course as a starting point where you can probably identify your passion and then, you know, go for your long term view of doing research because, you know, research will take typically two years three is logical. So this is not a research based course. So,

yes, I think it will really give a a flavor of what what can be done over here and then you can build on the research. So I'm going to take up a few more questions. While I'm doing that. I'll also open up the poll here, we just, you know, there's a small pool, it'll help us improve, you know, our webinars and all of that. So I would request all of you who are here to take that up while we, you know, take up some more questions. So, if you would, okay, so there's a question, you know, if and I can answer that Chandra, you have around 12 years of experience in the IT industry, but your basic knowledge about Python don't know much about coding. If you have basic knowledge in Python, and you are eligible, you are eligible for the program. The question is, are you eligible or not? Yes, you are eligible for the program. There are boot camps that there is an zero week or zero module that is there which is a part of the program. Which will actually prep you up in terms of the coding requirements that you have for learning Python and all of that will brush up all of that the requirement is that you have some basic coding knowledge. And you can come in you write and sob about, you know, covering why you need to come into the program, what is it that you want to achieve out of the program, and the regular education details, so it's something that you are eligible for. So, in terms of profit is a good question. Again, Robbie had sent it out. How is the course content balanced? and money? You can take that question? We will spend another four more minutes or five minutes and by 705, if that's okay, man, me.

Yeah, that's fine.

No issues. So in terms of you have people just as a question around content is that you have a course content, which is how is the course content balanced for people with the younger set of Experience the emerging professionals zero to three years to 10 plus years of experience. Can you just throw a bit of light on that? I'm sure you had people in your batch also who had, who were in less than five years experience range. And I'm sure there were people in your batch who had more than 10 years experience as well. So how did the course address both these diverse sets of people?

Yes. So I think the best thing about this course was the flexibility it provides and I think the course has matured over a period of time taking feedback from all the groups of people. And in our group, for example, we had people who are coming directly out of college, you know, 2021 year old, fresh out of college, two very senior guys who are running their own organizations running their own startups or playing CXO roles. 2530 years of experience and based on I think all the features feedback which has been taken in last two, three years, I saw a lot of flexibility. For example, if I was looking for concepts, I was looking for business application, I was looking for some understanding of what is future looking like, I got that. But then there were a few individuals who wanted you know, to code hands on on Python. So, if you look at the exercises, which were given, they came in multiple flavors for us, you know, you had an option to focus more on concepts or you had an option where you can code from scratch which means you don't have to you will not be given anything and it is expected that based on the problem which is given, you will code each and every thing in that exercise. And similarly, if you Look at hackathon, a group was created in such a manner that it had all the flavors. You know, there were people who were not comfortable in coding, I was somewhere in between, you know, I coded during my earlier days, I was comfortable with R, Python was new for me. So I was somewhere in between struggling, then we had two people who are really good and very comfortable with Python. So when that group was created, it was created very nicely in a manner that everyone was able to contribute and learn from it. So I think it is one of those few courses where something is there for everyone, you know, what you're looking for, right? You know, if you're from concepts to

deep coding, if you're looking, you will get both the flavors. Absolutely. And you had the mental support as well. You guys could reach out to your mentors at any point in time. If you had faced any problems, right?

Oh, yeah V, especially during hackathon days, I think we made our mental state quite late till we finished our work. And we bothered them sometimes late on Friday evenings, so they were quite supportive, and a lot of valuable inputs came from them. So they will not give you give spoon feeding to you because they will make things too easy for you. So they will give you nudge you to the right direction. And that's what I really liked. Because when you struggle with the problem you learn rather than somebody saying go, you know, copy this code, so that doesn't work. So that that aspect was really good. Absolutely.

So the poll is still on, I'd request people to, you know, vote and help us improve ourselves. There are a lot there are a couple of questions for five questions around people from mechanical engineering background, whether the program benefits, so what everybody's information manmeet himself is a mechanical engineer, correct?

Yes.

So, you know, and he's you're talking about and working in this sector for so long. So I don't think of being a mechanical engineer or any kind of an engineer is, is goes against you, you have to have some basics of coding. And if you know that we have, you know, there's even a free Python. We are running free Python classes, I believe one is starting next Monday. So if you are interested, you can come in over here, brush up your Python skills, and then apply for the program. So that's something that is there. There are lots of other programs in the market money. So why would you Why did you choose the DMM program? I know you've answered that is Brian primarily I'm trying to ask you the Do you were you have access to the platform to the LMS. Talk a little bit about that as well. Because, you know, that's something which enables a lot of activity, especially right now, with COVID being there, we can come to classes physically, and the program will happen online. So how was your experience on the on that front? So I

think let me answer the LMS part first. Okay. So I think so I, I run a small organization in a company like Microsoft. And, you know, we run our processes and there are issues which can happen, but in my journey during the four months of that program, you know, one thing which was commendable was, I didn't find a single technical glitch in your LMS software. And in fact, I complimented it to whoever built it that you know, even people like us Commit to one or two mistakes in four months or 545 mistakes. But you are, you know, implementation of LMS in terms of when the course notebooks are available when the videos are available when the tests are available, we're spot on. There was I couldn't recall a single place where it was missed. So very, very robust LMS system. very interactive and very easy to use. That's what I liked. And secondly, I just want everyone to know that after the courses finished, you know, I have access to this LMS for one year, and in fact, what I started doing is there are some 42 or 44 exercises. Now, every day, I am revisiting and trying to go much deeper. Because there may be some aspect which I forgot. And so I still have that access. I am still going through my learning process. Even though I came out of that group somewhere in January, it has been more than six months, but my learning continues on that LMS platform. Absolutely.

Learning, it's all about learning. I mean, we also as professionals, have to be open to the idea of learning and building new competencies. Last question before we end this. There's this question which is coming from Deepak. So Deepak asks, Is a six month program enough to get a job in the IT industry? is a six month program on AI ml? You know, like the beach, apply the program that you've done? Is that enough for you to get a toehold in the IT industry in a in a job that you can work on in the same space?

See, we'll get a trial probably give a very honest answer because I hire in this field okay. So, there are a lot of other factors in terms of landing up with job in this area, okay?

And

this course can help but it is not the only factor. Okay. So when we are hiring, we are looking for candidates which are passionate about these areas, you know, I have hired people who have zero background in this area, okay, who have just done, you know, this course or a similar course, but they were able to demonstrate an amazing amount of passion and also, you know, great problem solving skills, because this is an area which will take you know, the learning journey is eight years, 10 years before you call yourself an expert. Definitely, you know, give a minimum five to six years, two years So, you cannot do any course and then say that I am an expert in this area okay. So, that is not what people are looking for when they are searching for candidates okay. So, there are you know a lot of other ingredients, this is definitely a very important aspect that you have demonstrated your passion by picking up this course going through it and you understand the concepts and then you have taken those concepts and probably participated in some kaggle competition you have applied it in your work. So, we are all looking for you know, different things when we select candidates and and this course is going to help but there are a lot of other ingredients when you talk about job.

Yeah, so, I mean, you will get functional some bits of functional knowledge obviously, it's a journey that is there, but then you there are the other aspects which are the, you know, transferable skills and non transferable skills that we have Which obviously helps you it's no nobody will you know even if you have a BP certificate from top company in the world or sorry a top education institution in the world, you are not guaranteed to get a job because like Monique said, there are so many other factors which which goes into your, you know, you will being a great fit for that role. And your functional knowledge is just one of them. There are so many other things. So, that's, that's about it. So okay, so this is the last question which I'll answer. It's a certificate program. It's not a diploma or a degree program that we have. And there is you will also find there's a message from in the group from Susan who has joined so she leads the admissions or the programs in talentsprint. Her contact number is given and the team that manages the admissions for this program, feel free to reach out to them. I would like to take a big round To take this opportunity to tank money, you know, a very short period of time, I just informed him and he agreed to do this. Thank you so much money, it's been wonderful to get insights from a practitioner of the program. And and understand you know how this program could help us I'm sure a lot of value will get added to all of the people who joined in the thank you again for doing that. And I look forward to meeting you sometime in person. If you're there in office, I would love to catch up.

If you're here, I read through it was my pleasure, you know, interacting with people who aspire to get into this area. And as as a parting note, I will say that being in this area is like magical. So if you are passionate about it, get your journey started. Don't wait for it.

Absolutely. The words Well said. You know, that's the People will hopefully take that and we will be I look forward to meeting you know, everybody who's come in to this webinar today in some future class. So thank you me so much. It's been lovely having you. People close the webinar. I'm going to keep the webinar on for the next couple of minutes. But you can log off on me Thank you so much. And and the there are some people who have not yet voted. My sincere request is please, you know, give us feedback for the webinar. It will help us you know, come up with webinars which will help answer your questions more often. Thank you so much from everybody at talentsprint for spending this our 1015 Minutes with Us. And I look forward to welcoming you all to our cohort, which is starting in the month of August. Thank you again and look forward to you know, seeing you in the future. Couldn't

Watch the entire interview here https://youtube.videoken.com/embed/sT8xPIbn5Y4