Extracting insights from text data: Draup’s data scientists share what it takes to drive business impact

In today’s hyper digital world, massive quantities of data is worth its weight in gold, and holds the key for any company to build strong business strategies. However, merely having access to data is not enough - turning that data into actionable insights is the real clincher. In this scenario, the relevance and significance of data science and data scientists is undeniable. And Draup, a growing AI based Talent and Sales Intelligence company, is building on this significance in a big way. “A data science team is a link between data and wisdom,” shares Vamsee Tirukkala, Co-Founder & Chief Commercial Officer, Draup. The company is pioneering its operations in the field of Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Machine Learning (ML), and this is where its data science team plays a key role in, helping make better decisions and better automations.

What makes the Data Science team an unparalleled contributor to Draup’s growth on the path to becoming one of the fastest to reach a Unicorn status in B2B space in India, is that it works on challenging problem statements in the domain of Natural language processing (NLP), dealing with a lot of raw textual data, which is arguably the most difficult to deal with, as per industry experts.

How are data scientists at Draup driving an impact?

“We are the bridge between the massive datasets that Draup possesses and the amazing features and capabilities the platform provides to its customers,” says Deepak Mishra, a Senior Data Scientist at Draup. Deepak and his fellow mates are currently working on some interesting problems like summarisation of a lengthy text , creating a generic data scraper that can get data from multiple sources, textual classification, NLP-based query engine among others.“The common denominator of all these tasks is that we convert data into information and actionable insights,” he says.

Cross team collaboration is a crucial aspect at Draup, and Data Scientists like Deepak work closely with the product and research teams to understand the project requirements and focus their efforts in building models to extract or generate the insights. The use-cases of these projects are wide - from improved search experiences to job role transitions to reskilling. Some projects also serve as a backbone for further research and analysis. For example Draup has a model that can accurately suggest a learning path( course and certifications one can take out of a library containing millions of courses) for a person moving from say Devops Engineer to Frontend Developer very accurately.

“In a world where multinational giants are still at cross-roads about leveraging Machine Learning capabilities to automate their day-to-day activities and routine operations, Draup prides on being a pioneer in achieving par-human accuracy in its tagging, classification and comprehension models.” says Kashish Jajodia, CTO of Draup.

An Agile organization culture is the key to drive innovation, Why?

Data Scientists at Draup also bust the general assumption that Data Science and Machine Learning projects often demand rigorous literature study, planning, and execution, by delivering quick analysis. This ability to act swiftly has often translated into wins for Draup’s customers. “In one such instance, we conceptualised the idea of the possibility of work from home for several job roles and the numerous attributes that could contribute to that. The outcome was an interesting analysis of various roles and how favorable they are for work from home scenarios,” shares Deepak. While this focus on innovation and speed is at the core of Draup, a key enabling factor here is Draup’s autonomous, open, and flat culture.

”Everyone has the opportunity to pitch a new idea - be it an idea about managing intra team communication or brainstorming over a new product feature. The management decisions are not just communicated to the team, but they are ideated with the team,” says Sachin Kalsi, a senior data scientist, who joined Draup 2 years ago.

The Data Science team, as is the case with every other team at Draup, enjoys autonomy on how the team can approach and solve a problem statement. The team members get to decide the tools, techniques, and timelines. The openness is what makes them thrive and get better. Sachin says all of this has translated into the team being equipped to take on complex projects.

From starting out as a two-member team working on projects based on data aggregators and statistics, the Data Science team today has grown bigger and better. It dives deep into NLP, leverages the latest research and tools in the fields and holds a very important position within the company. Given the growing relevance of Data Science for businesses across sizes and sectors, the team is looking to expand. “ We are always looking out for rockstar practitioners to join our team and grow together with us,” shares Vijay Swaminathan, CEO of Draup.

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What it means to be a data scientist at Draup

At Draup, there is an ocean of opportunities and resources for the team to upskill themselves and learn through Premium course provider subscriptions, cross-functional learning initiatives and weekly study group sessions. “The organization supports you for further knowledge acquisitions in a particular subject matter. I have been focussing a lot on Active learning framework and transformer based models like GPT3,” shares Nemish Kanwar, a Senior Data Scientist.

TechTalk, a cross-team initiative that enables cross-functional learning and staying up to date with technology developments, covers a gamut of fascinating topics. Another initiative, Study Sessions, is just as it sounds. It’s a weekly group study session exclusive to the Data Science team aimed at helping the team members stay on top of the learning curve. Data Science is a field where the pace of innovation is such that, if you are not updated with industry trends for a month, you are already outdated. So continuous learning is of utmost importance for DS teams and Draup enables this.

Initiatives aside, the work culture and atmosphere at Draup nurtures all its teams and creates a positive work environment. Think of it as a small, intimate wedding, Nemish says. The one you really have fun at, instead of the run-of-the-mill big fat Indian wedding. “It is the small weddings with a handful of people that are often the most fun. Draup feels like that. Everyone knows everyone. The work is interesting and enjoyable. Colleagues become your closest friends who make you laugh at the end of a busy workday”.

If you are interested to explore opportunities to work as a Data Scientist at Draup, learn more here.