Each year, Analytics India Magazine publishes the annual list of the most prominent data scientists in India. This list recognises the data science professionals who have had an exceptional journey in the domain and have contributed unique innovations and unparalleled accomplishments. 2019 is the fifth year of the industry-acclaimed list and we have 10 names with diverse backgrounds who have made significant contributions in the field. From building data science teams to developing data science solutions, these data scientists have numerous credits to their name.
For the list, we have considered data scientists working with organisations or independently, irrespective of the size and nature of work. Also, we do not repeat names from previous years, so, do check earlier years’ inclusions.
Read our previous list:
(The names are listed in alphabetical order)
Aravind Chandramouli
Analytics & Data Science Journey: Chandramouli started his career with an internship at Google in 2007 and has worked with Microsoft, GE Research Labs, Fidelity Investments over his 12-year career. At Fidelity Investments, Aravind led a team of over 10 data scientists solving tough business problems in the areas of Machine Learning and Text Mining.
Current Role & Responsibilities: Chandramouli is the Principal, Data Science at Tredence. He currently heads the data science practice at the company with a focus on innovation.
Significant Achievements: He is credited with creating Agent Virtual Assistant, that could reduce the customer hold time by enabling the customer service agent to answer customer questions faster. The system used a combination of Information retrieval techniques, modified language models, deep learning methods to mine question and answers from customer chat. This system was recognised with the President’s Award for Innovation in 2018 at Fidelity Investments India (awarded to just one team). The team also filed for a patent that was granted. He has six patent applications with two grants under his name and over 10 publications in top conferences and journals.
Education: Chandramouli has a PhD in Computer Science from the University of Kansas with a focus on Information Retrieval and Machine Learning.
Arpan Gupta
Analytics & Data Science Journey: With a rich experience of over 16 years in consulting across CPG and retail sectors, Gupta has been instrumental in using analytics for planning and fine-tuning their brand strategy. He has worked extensively in developing analytics solutions that have been used by global brands to deepen their understanding of consumers in different markets. He was also a part of the initial seed team at Marketics Technologies, a successful industry startup in analytics which was acquired by WNS in 2008.
Current Role & Responsibilities: Currently he is part of the leadership team at TEG Analytics, pivoting a crucial strategy around building analytics products.
Significant Achievements: With an ability to convince multiple stakeholders through data insights, Gupta has witnessed the transition of the data science practise from the early years of using SAS based tools to the ML/AI based algorithmic paradigms today. While there are several experts in the data sciences field who can champion the use of advanced methods to solve business problems, Gupta is one of the few in the industry who believes in focusing on this human connection.
Education: MBA from IIM Ahmedabad with a background in Physics from IIT Kharagpur.
Muthumari S
Current Role & Responsibilities: Muthumari S is the Sub-Business Unit Head, Brillio Analytics, specialized in delivering AI/ML use-cases at scale across customer/product/marketing analytics, NLP and vision analytics. In her current role, she works with CXOs, in enabling their organizations to make accurate data-driven decisions as well as solve ambiguous problems involving unstructured text/image and machine-generated data with tangible business impact.
Analytics & Data Science Journey: Her natural affinity for numbers and being able to draw sense out of them enabled her to start her career with analytics/data science during the recession. She was fortunate to work on her first project on developing a macro-econometrics model for a US Software provider on quantifying the impact of recession on their product sales. Over a span of 12 years, she has worked on multiple data science projects including hyper-personalization for eCommerce customers across industries, image-based recommendations and consumer prediction using NLP.
Significant Achievements: She has evangelized AI/ML with at least 10 Fortune 500 accounts which she managed primarily in the technology, telecom and media industries. While AI at scale was still being talked about in 2016, she was a key contributor in the patent on Video Analytics – that was targeted at making sense of the humongous amount of unstructured data created by different forms of media devices and digital content.
Education: She holds a Bachelor’s degree in Engineering from College of Engineering Guindy, Anna University.
Manu Chandra
Analytics & Data Science Journey: Chandra has over 20 years of experience in data science consulting and training across various domains such as fraud management, credit risk and customer analytics. He has deep expertise in applying predictive analytics using deep learning and machine learning to solve complex problems to create scalable solutions. Prior to founding MathLogic, he has worked with American Express and Accenture Consulting across multiple geographies.
Current Role & Responsibilities: He is the co-founder and Chief Data Scientist at FN MathLogic Consulting Services Pvt Ltd.
Significant Achievements: He has worked on key projects across industries such as developing a forecasting model to predict cash disbursement from an ATM, creating a pricing framework for a wealth management firm, developing credit risk models and migration of codes to SPARK. Chandra also has a deep passion for teaching machine learning and deep learning and has trained over 2000 professionals.
Education: Manu holds a Master’s degree in Business Administration from MDI Gurgaon and a Bachelor’s degree in Engineering from IIT Delhi.
Naveen Xavier
Data Science Journey: Xavier has an interesting journey being a veteran from the Indian army and having served the country in multiple operations in the J&K sector. A technocrat at heart, he has worked on diverse assignments across Intelligence, IT & Telecom domain. He was handpicked for NATGRID, a coveted assignment at the Home Ministry for the establishment of a predictive analytics framework for countering terrorism. There he played a key role in applying machine learning to uncover hidden patterns using national databases.
Current Role & Responsibilities: Xavier currently heads Data & AI Products vertical at the Aditya Birla Group. He is a ‘change agent’ who is propelling the transformation of a legacy group to embrace AI solutions built on a hybrid cloud model. He is driving a unique blend of open innovation, rapid prototyping, industry-grade productisation, and enterprise-level scale-up. Xavier along with his team of data scientists are working on solving complex problems by optimising deep learning techniques. He is driving cross-industry innovation by adopting analogies through contextualization in the field of computer vision, language understanding and industrial sensor technology.
Significant Achievements: Post-retirement, Xavier turned an entrepreneur and co-founded DataVal Analytics with Dr Sam Pitroda, which provided boutique analytics services to companies across the globe. The start-up has the unique distinction of cracking the Facebook bAbI Challenge using Natural Language Understanding.
Education: Xavier is an alumnus of the National Defence Academy. He holds an Engineering Degree in IT & Telecom from Military College of Telecommunication Engineering as well as a Master’s Degree in Software Systems from BITS, Pilani.
Omprakash Ranakoti
Analytics & Data Science Journey: A bioinformatician turned data scientist, Rankoti has over 14 years of experience in statistical modelling, machine learning and deep learning. He started his data journey while working on a predictive diagnostic tool for prostate cancer to automate data collection and analyse large amount of data, and has since delivered over 50 advanced analytics solutions in his career. He has since worked in various industries such as CPG, media & entertainment, healthcare and life sciences. Rankoti has also been instrumental in building an R package as Integration of R and HPCC system to use the facility for Big Data analysis.
Current Role & Responsibilities: He is currently the principal data scientist at Genpact and leads a team of experts in ML/DL at Genpact Analytics. At Genpact, he champions projects on data science and works with clients with a focus on providing business value through innovation. Currently, his research is focused on developing machine learning models for workforce scheduling and optimization for a large call centre.
Significant Achievements: He has been recognised with various awards at Genpact, Symphony Services for his contribution to the development of efficient operations through data science.
Education: Rankoti is a Post Graduate in Bioinformatics from the Institute of Bioinformatics and Applied Biotechnology.
Satyamoy Chatterjee
Analytics & Data Science Journey: Chatterjee has led and demonstrated measurable business impact across different verticals such as Banking and Financial Services, Healthcare, Retail etc. In his past roles with Citigroup, he created business impacts by application of predictive and prescriptive analytics for customer lifecycle management across asset and liability products for the bank.
Current Role & Responsibilities: Chatterjee currently is the executive vice president and heads the client solutions and product strategy at Analyttica Datalab. He has been playing pivotal roles in designing prototypes for analytics and AI product development with the goal of inventing and creating IP portfolio for his company.
Significant Achievements: He has been a think tank for Analyttica in conceptualizing and steering the product ATH Precision. Satyamoy has a design patent in innovation in the field of experiential analytics and knowledge immersion. He also has a patent extension on designing adaptive machine learning systems. He also set up the mortgage analytics practice for Global Decision Management in Citigroup for it’s North America Mortgage business and created rapid impacts by application of advanced analytics and data science methodologies to significantly reduce customer attrition.
Education: He has an MS in Industrial Engineering from Wichita State University (2003) and did his Executive General Management from IIM Bangalore in 2012.
Srivatsa Kanchibotla
Current Roles and Responsibilities: Kanchibolta is the Principal Data Scientist and Senior Partner at TheMathCompany. He currently works on building the next generation of AutoML tools that can develop and deploy ML models at scale. With a view to addressing this distressing gap, his current focus is on building frameworks and tools that allow a Data Scientist to easily build, test, experiment and deploy ML models.
Analytics and Data Science Journey: With more than 13 years of experience across retail as shop floor engineer and academia as a physics teacher, he stepped into a data science career. In his career, he has worked with 5+ Fortune 500 companies creating millions of dollars’ worth of impact for clients, alongside building and managing large teams of Data Engineers and Data Scientists alike. Prior to TheMathCompany, he worked with Mu Sigma as a Senior Manager.
Significant Achievements: He has developed state-of-the-art Repairs Forecasting models across 70 product lines for the World’s largest technology company, built analytics CoEs for multiple Fortune 500 Insurance giants. He also developed various other analytics solutions such as Fraud Abuse and Waste (FWA) detection framework and Pattern Recognition algorithms that detect in-game events during a live sports event, based on activity data.
Education: Srivatsa holds a Bachelor’s degree from IIT Madras.
Sriram Krishnamurthy
Analytics & Data Science Journey: With more than 17 years of experience in data science and consulting, he has led data science initiatives across North America, Europe and APAC. He has held key roles in the data science and analytics function at Western Union corporation and was also a partner at a marketing consulting firm where he provided data-driven strategic counsel to clients across the entire range of marketing topics.
Current Role & Responsibilities: He currently heads the data science and AI group at Tiger Analytics, with a focus on delivering client impact through developing solutions by harnessing algorithms, platforms and data at scale. He also manages data science capability development, R&D and product development.
Significant Achievements: Krishnamurthy has built and led data science teams to provide solutions to problems across a wide range of topics such as pricing, portfolio optimization, forecasting, fraud and compliance, sensor-based preventive maintenance, marketing spend optimization, demand modelling. He has also co-authored articles in leading journals on topics related to demand modelling, econometrics, consumer welfare and planning.
Education: He has a masters from The University of Texas at Austin and an undergraduate degree from IIT, Delhi.
Sunil Vuppala
Analytics & Data Science Journey: Dr Sunil has 15 years of industrial and research experience in machine learning, deep learning, analytics, automation, IoT, healthcare and smart grid. He has worked with companies like Philips research where he contributed to explainable deep learning, inference engine for Health Suite platform. He was also one of the key architects of Infosys Mana (Nia) Platform, a knowledge-based AI platform. He has also helped agri-business client to improve efficiencies by 40%. Dr Vuppala also contributes to the academic community as visiting/adjunct faculty in top institutes of India.
Current Role & Responsibilities: Dr Sunil is working as Director of data science in Ericsson GAIA. He currently leads a team of over 20 data scientists and data engineers to solve problems in the telecom domain. These problems range from visual intelligence of drone images to predict issues with root causes from TBs of data for large telco operators in the world.
Significant Achievements: Dr Vuppala has 20 patents to his credit with 6 patents granted and 14 pending in the US, Europe and India. With over 30 papers in journals and international conferences, he is also an elected fellow of IETE for his contributions in analytics, IoT and AI. He was the recipient of Infosys awards of excellence in innovation category in 2016 and has delivered more than 100 talks to spread the knowledge of AI and analytics in various forums.
Education: Vuppala has M.Tech from IIT Roorkee (Thesis at Macquarie University, Sydney, Australia), PhD from IIIT Bangalore and SMP from IIM Ahmedabad.
