Sandipan Chakraborty is an Associate Lead Data Consultant at Gramener. He joined team Gramener 4 months back. I talked to Sandipan about his experience so far at Gramener and the things he is doing here. Here’s what he had to say.
Q – Hey Sandipan. How are you doing?
I am doing great, Sunil. Thanks for having me in this conversation.
Q – Sandipan, how would you introduce your engagement with Gramener?
Sure. My name is Sandipan Chakraborty. I work as an Associate Lead Data Consultant at Gramener. It’s been closely over four months now that I joined Gramener. The journey so far has been extremely wonderful, full of learning, and a lot of enthusiasm around. I am really having a good time here.
Q – What kind of role do you perform as an Associate Lead Data Consultant here?
That’s tricky. There are multiple stages of data consultancy. Each stage is different and the whole team plays a vital role in completing the cycle of data consultancy. As a data consultant, my primary job is to understand the needs of the clients and offer them insightful stories to help them speed up their business decisions.
The client shares data sets with us from which we try to find insights. It’s a team effort that includes exploration of insights by our Analyst team, creating designs to present data in the most visually comprehensive manner, and developing the data applications. Finally, the QA team that validates our work by testing the data applications. Combining all the above-said factors, we create data stories. We always follow the idea that stories are memorable, they are easy, and they pique interest.
Q – How would you differentiate a data consultant from a project manager?
There are instances where a data consultant and a project management position overlap each other. Gathering of information at the initial stage is something that a data consultant does and a project manager doesn’t.
I would call data consultants off-the-record-project-managers. We have to check the status of delivering projects, resource allocation, design implementation, the duration of the project. In short, a data consultant bridges the gap between a designer, a developer, and a client. The clients communicate with a data consultant and a data consultant converts the functional requirements into technical before forwarding it to the in-house team.
Q – Are you involved in any projects at Gramener?
Internally I am looking after the PMO activities in Gramener. It’s an internal activity that sets, maintains and ensures standards for project management across that organization. I am also working on creating a Data Audit Tool, for a leading global not-for-profit organization.
Q – Interesting. Tell us more about the Data Audit Tool and the kind of inputs you are giving to it.
Alright. Data comes from different sources. The research to gather the data must be as good as the data itself or the outcomes that we are expecting. Now, if the data is not consistent, and if there are values missing from the data, then it will hamper the output too.
So, our job is to create a tool that can sanitize the data and can aid in research. The data goes through several automated sanity checks so that the users get an error-free data set.
Q – How have been your experience working with the leadership team at Gramener?
There have been quite a few instances. For example, getting to know Ganes Kesari, who is the co-founder and also the Head of Analytics at Gramener. We have weekly brainstorming-cum-touchpoint calls where we talk about how can we simplify data analysis and convey insights in a more comprehensive manner. We talk about how we can contribute to the monthly hackathons that Gramener organizes.
Apart from him, there have been interactions with Senior Managers. I must say that the hierarchy is extremely transparent and I find no difficulty in reaching out to anyone at Gramener, be it anyone from the leadership team or senior management.
Q – So, you are saying that getting hold of co-founders is easy in Gramener?
Actually, I never got a hold of them. In fact, they got a hold of me. That’s, again, the beauty of working here. When I joined Gramener, a really nice concept of daily learning was going on. S. Anand, who is the CEO and also a co-founder of Gramener, used to share one TED Talks with everyone, every day.
The topics ranged from motivation to perseverance to design, and even data analysis. And then there was a set of optional questions like what did we learn from the video or how would we implement the learning in our lives… you know, things like that. I think it’s a great way to help a person grow personally as well as professionally.
Q – What did you learn from these activities?
Well, the activity did not end at the Question and Answers. Anyone who completed watching the series of daily learning videos got a chance to improve a few habits. Hence, I wanted to learn better analysis, better ways to find insights, visualization tools, and decision-making.
I listed it all down and the leadership team is helping me to achieve it. The learning process is deliberate and in progress where I interact with my mentor frequently.
Q – You were talking about data storytelling hackathons. What is your contribution to it?
Oh ya! That’s an interesting thing to talk about. Unfortunately, I couldn’t participate in my first hackathon as everything was new to me and I was just adjusting. But, I observed it. It was good to see people coming together, working on data sets and producing wonderful data stories.
I participated in the next episode of data storytelling hackathon after a month. I and my team (Hemanth and Mohit from the design team) worked on finding insights from the data of deaths while conquering Mount Everest. We created a physical data visualization that shows the number of deaths that occurred while climbing Mt. Everest from 1922 to date.
Q – That’s great. How was the experience?
That’s the beauty of the hackathon, Sunil. People from different backgrounds team up and share their expertise in creating data stories. As I said, in my team there were two designers and one data consultant. It not only gives you an idea about how a project runs but also adds an opportunity to interact with multiple CoEs in Gramener.
Another good thing about the hackathon is that we got feedback on the same day. In that way, we could quickly work on improvements. The marketing team helps in sharing every outcome from the hackathon on Gramener’s social media channels. That way we socialize what we do here and try to build a community around the niche domain of data storytelling.
It’s a touchy feeling, you know, working closely with leaders and getting explicit recognition. It’s been so amazing that I did not miss participating in any of the upcoming hackathons. I have worked on sports data, political data, and even demographic health survey datasets. Together we created data stories in multiple formats like video data stories, GIF data stories, It was quite an experience.
Q – Any memorable incident you would like to share from your tenure so far at Gramener?
Yes. I remember one because it’s the most recent. A week back, it was 9:30 or 10 AM in the morning. I went to the pantry to grab a cup of coffee. Luckily, Anand was in Hyderabad that week. He crossed me in the lobby and we shared a hello. Now, what seemed like a small hello, ultimately turned into a half an hour chat over a coffee.
Now, I am mentioning this because we hardly see CEOs let alone interact with them (experience from my previous jobs). We did not talk directly about work but we talked about how we could improve our work processes, be it analyzing data, presenting insights, better designs, better formats of storytelling, etc.
Q – How would you summarize your experience so far at Gramener?
Difficult to summarize in short, but I’ll try. Like I said these are my early days and there’s a lot of learning in my way. Gramener emphasizes learning as we work and the culture is really friendly. I wish to interact more and build relationships and come back to you with more stories.
Also, read Pranav Vadrevu’s experience during his internship at Gramener. Pranav is an undergraduate Computer Science student at the University of Waterloo.
