Miraculous March

Building a recommendation deck for the Mastercard foundation

The first two weeks of March were filled with excitement, panic, hustling and intensity as my team wrapped up an exciting month – long challenge with the Mastercard foundation. Our goal was to build a recommendation deck to help the Mastercard foundation create 1 million+ green and dignified jobs for African youth by 2030.  

Our team narrowed in on Nigeria’s agricultural sector as our point of impact, to add greater specificity and local context to our recommendation. We identified the problem of lack of access to vocational training for Nigerian youth (especially for those young people who could not afford a university education), which resulted in young people lacking the necessary knowledge and skills required to be employable in Nigerian agriculture– the sector with the largest contribution to the country’s GDP. Briefly, our solution consisted of building vocational training centers pan Nigeria and offering the youth free training in both agricultural and entrepreneurial skills, which could lead to these young Nigerians creating their own agri-businesses, while also creating employment opportunities for their peers. 

One key takeaway from the challenge was the importance of Outreach. The entire team agreed on the immense importance of talking to experts in the field, both to understand the industry landscape and potential opportunities, to finally validating that our solution would work from people who had a firsthand understanding of the ground reality. From day 1, the entire team was involved in reaching out to experts on Linkedin and setting up meetings throughout the week, which resulted in us being able to schedule 20 expert calls over those 4 weeks. Each and every call was immensely valuable to our understanding of the problem, the target demographic and the feasibility of our solution. After all, in certain situations like solution validation, primary data becomes much more valuable than secondary data.

Secondly, I personally understand the value of consistently incorporating data to back up each claim we make in our recommendation. After all, executives at large companies care little about our individual perspectives and opinions, but if we can showcase relevant, powerful statistics and figures to back up our statements, that adds greatly to the impact of our pitch. I especially learnt how to get creative with data, because one cannot always find a data point for one’s specific claim. However, it is possible to use generalization and extrapolation (within reason) to play around with your data points, and tailor them to your specific needs.   

A big shout – out to my teammates Shrut, Rana and Shreya, without whom this recommendation deck wouldn’t have looked 1/10^th as legit.

If you are interested in viewing our final recommendation, please click here. 

Publishing my Learn article on Artificial Intelligence

This month I trained my content creation muscles, as well as research and writing skills, by publishing an introductory article on Artificial Intelligence. I covered topics like Supervised and Unsupervised learning, weights, biases, parameter tuning, CNN’s, RNN’s, reinforcement learning and more, with the intention of helping my readers understand the underlying technology – the ‘method’ behind the ‘madness’ of Machine Learning.

Writing is the best way to fully cement your understanding of any topic/concept. You can’t write clearly about a concept which you don’t fully understand yourself. While writing my AI Learn article, there were multiple times I had to go back and watch videos, read articles, skim through research papers in order to fully cement my understanding of a particular concept. This research and my subsequent better understanding of the topic, helped me write more cohesively, ensuring I was explaining the topic in such a clear and simple way that even a complete beginner could understand my entire article, from start to finish.       

I also practiced the mindset of Done > Perfect. Being a published author myself, I always set extremely high standards for my writing. While I did try my level best to reach those high benchmarks I had set for myself, I had to constantly remind myself to stay out of the ‘perfectionism’ trap. Especially when it comes to the process of writing, there is no correct answer/ no best way to go about writing an article, hence the best approach is just to start writing and figure out what works for you. From day one, I was very clear that I needed to finish my Learn article in under 2 weeks, because if I spent too much time writing and editing it, I would never begin building interesting projects with AI and ML, which would have far more weightage on my portfolio. I allowed myself a maximum of 3 edits before I sent my article out into the world, however flawed it may be.

Done > Perfect. Rather than spending forever scrutinizing every single word in my article, by getting my article out there, I can begin to receive constructive feedback from experts, mentors and professional in the field, who will have far better advice and tips on how I can improve my next AI/ML article. And that is the more efficient approach.

Visiting my hometown

My month began with a family trip to my village called ‘Patri’, located in a tiny corner of the state of Gujrat. This trip was a mixture of family bonding and relaxation, as well as visiting a number of Jain temples for religious purposes. We also visited some amazing Indian history museums in Bhuj, where I learnt about the life stories of India’s greatest freedom fighters like Mahatma Gandhi, Bhagat Singh and Sardar Patel.    

For me, the highlight of the trip was a connection back to my roots. This was my first time visiting my hometown – the birthplace of my ancestors. It was my first time eating locally prepared Gujrati food like ‘thepla’, ‘mani’, and ‘dhokla’. It was a revelation for me to see the tiny mud house in which my grandfather grew up, compare it with our modern house in the city, and thus reflect upon how far our family had progressed over just 2 generations. I was filled with gratitude for all the luxuries and privileges I enjoyed, which were unavailable to my grandparents – after all, what had I done apart from being born into this blessed family, to have been bestowed with so many gifts and treasures like warm water, a soft bed, a high – quality education.

They say that ‘The village is a place where you can find peace, unity, strength, inspiration, and most importantly, a natural life’. I couldn’t agree more. I passed young children dressed in dirty clothes, who had never once stepped inside a classroom, and probably lived in a tiny dirt house, who ran along, chatting and laughing, with not a care in the world. Being so close and connected to nature, away from the hustle and bustle of the cities can do wonders for a person’s physical and mental health. And villagers are the evidence of this. They are healthy, happy, connected to their roots, simplistic in their ways and part of a close-knit and supportive community: Many of us rich, modern city folks struggle to attain even one or two of these things over a lifetime, yet villagers enjoy them on a daily basis.

I thought I’d add one more section to all my monthly newsletters by sharing across one poem per month, from my trilogy of poetry, ‘Silent Ripples’.  

If you are interested in downloading the entire trilogy, click here.

The teenage tussle

Every teen wants

the joy, fun, freedom

that comes with growing up

and transitioning into adulthood

Every teen wants

to do things his own way

to make his own choices

good or bad, right or wrong

and live his life the way he feels right

But no teen is ready or willing

to take up the burden of responsibility

that comes with growing up :

financial independence

completing one's work on time, to perfection

managing one's relationships wisely, maturely

It's a testing time!

We teens are eager, stubborn

yearning for independence

yet not completely ready to let go

of our carefree, unbothered, unworried self

Book of the month:

Traces the origins of humankind from small bands of hunter-gatherers 100,000 years ago to the present – day global network through which our species has come to dominate the entire Earth. The most comprehensive history lesson you will ever take, compiled into 500 pages of powerful storytelling.

Movies of the month:

·      Searching (2018) – Aneesh Chaganty

·      Slumdog millionare (2008) – Danny Boyle

·      The Curious Case of Benjamin Button (2008) – David Fincher

·      Jojo Rabbit (2019) – Taika Waititi

·      First they killed my father (2017) – Angelina Jolie 

·      Apollo 13 (1995) – Ron Howard

·      Eye in the sky (2015) – Gavin Hood

·      The Martian (2015) – Ridley Scott

·      Saving Private Ryan (1998) – Steven Spielberg 

·      Icarus (2017) – Bryan Fogel  

Thank you for your time and I hope you enjoyed reading! Please subscribe to my monthly newsletter if you would like to stay updated about my monthly progress! Until then, Au revoir!