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Hello everyone! Did you know that chemical engineering companies like DRL and Piramal take interns not only for the ever-arduous core profiles, but also for analytics? As the world is progressing and there are increasingly vast volumes of data generated, every industry is trying to move towards technological advancements. This is a new and coming department in these old established companies.
This article will go over the selection process and share some experiences at Dr. Reddy's Labs as Analytics interns this summer. We have inputs from 2 fourth-year undergraduates in the Department of Chemical Engineering, Sanskar Narlawar and Satwik Murarka.
About the Selection Process:
The company came for internships during August end for two profiles - technical (core) and analytics. The IAF for the analytics profile opened only for the CSE, Electrical department, and students like us who are pursuing a C-MInDS minor.
The selection procedure consisted of a simple online assessment that had aptitude questions. Post that, students were shortlisted for an interview round. This interview round was very brief, around 20 mins, and was a technical cum personal interview with a few questions on ML basics and algorithms, some specific questions related to the DS Minor courses, and then HR questions on the lines of one’s motivation and plans for future. Now, this is the first time the Analytics IAF had opened, as the department itself was recently founded; this is to say that we did not know what to expect of the work in this niche. Piramal started its Analytics Department 3 years back and their internship program has really matured since. Additionally, the interviewer, from Stanford, was really knowledgeable and engaging, so we were sold on the idea of interning at DRL.
About the Pre-Internship Phase:
The internship was supposed to be an offline internship in Hyderabad, and it was for Sanskar. Everyone got their locations around two weeks before the internship - Sanskar had the office in Hyderabad, and while Satwik expected the same, he instead got a Work from Home location, out of all the other interns. He tried to get this changed, as anyone would after 1.5 years of online classes - to his dismay, he could not.
There was a two-day hybrid induction session - offline for people in Hyderabad and online for people working from home or other locations like Baddi/ Vizag. It helped them understand the goals and structure of the organization, had sessions on business etiquette and allowed for interactions with IITB alumni in DRL.
In Hyderabad, DRL's accommodation was really good, with almost 30+ members (9 from IITB and the remaining from other IITs) staying in the same apartment complex. There wasn't a single weekend that got wasted. From the offset, the interns always made enjoyable plans to explore a variety of places, food, and activities - there was a lot of free time and many friends nearby in other Hyderabad firms, the perfect (chemical xD) formula for some really good memories.
Projects and Work
About the Online Internship, Satwik Murarka says,
“I was allotted to work in the North America Generics Business Unit. I worked in the Data Science team with DRL employees and PwC consultants. I was assigned a purely Data Science project, unlike some of my co-interns who got more research/core projects.”
“The project statement was to predict the prices of molecules and drugs when their patent would expire, thus opening them up for other players to manufacture. I used various ML algorithms and learned how a data science project goes from being conceptualized to being implemented in the industry.”
“As the team worked with the North America division, the timings were slightly different from usual, with a typical workday starting at 11 am and ending at around 8 pm. The people were helpful, and I got a lot of guidance and assistance from my team members during the project.”
“It would have been an even better experience if the internship had been offline, but I learned much from this experience and explored the field. Feel free to ping me for any doubts regarding this profile or in general. All the best!”
About the Offline Internship, Sanskar Narlawar says,
“I had been selected for a Data Analytics role, though to be honest, it felt more like a market research intern. Here, my job was to prepare business case studies, after doing extensive market research, to identify potential product ideas for DRL where they can apply machine learning in Healthcare.”
“After one month of this ideating and after a lot of discussion with my mentor (and presentation making :/ ), we decided to work upon the Remote Patient Monitoring System. We aimed to make an ML model to continuously monitor patient activity and raise alerts in case of an emergency. While this might sound interesting, the work was quite slow. It took us one month to finalize the project, as we had complete freedom (due to the lack of anyone there with any actual Data Science background). Even afterward, due to the nascency of the Data Science department in DRL, we had to do all the technical things ourselves, leading to the work being quite simple and non-intensive.”
“However, the work culture is employee friendly, the timing is flexible and my mentors were as supportive as possible with their technical knowledge. Overall, my experience was quite relaxed and enjoyable, but if you are looking only from a Data Science point of view then this might not be the right choice for your progress.”