Tata Steel-The Beginning
Tata Steel-Women of Mettle is a scholarship programme which is open to female students from selected engineering colleges. The shortlisted students get to work on a live technical challenge. I came to know about this programme from my seniors.
Registration opens during the month of march and we had to fill all the personal details along with a write-up on why we are interested in this programme and a recommendation from one of our faculty members. The main focus was on the write-up so I spent a day or two to come up with my best and to make sure that it is not exaggerated. To avoid every kind of negative aspects in my write-up, I took help from my seniors to get it corrected. This proved to be very helpful.
Round-1:
The Round-1 of selection procedure was to be conducted which would include domain based multiple choice questions. For this, we practised questions from AMCAT which was again an A+ for us as we faced similar type of questions in this round.
On completing this round, I wasn’t confident enough that I would be selected, as only 50 students were to be selected from around 800 students and there was a huge participation from IITs and NITs. In about a week, the results were declared. When I saw my mail, I was amazed to find my name among those 50 students who would now have to work on the live technical challenge provided by Tata Steel based on their respective domains.
Case Study and the preparations:
In about 2 weeks, I received a mail stating the problem statement of my case study and my mentor details who would guide me throughout this project. The case study was on Advance Analytics-Predictive Model. The problem statement was to predict the price of coking coal for the next year. This would be helpful for Tata steel as large tons of coking coal are bought every day and having a prediction of its price would help them to gain profit. The dummy dataset was provided by Tata Steel to work upon it and get a solution.
I was completely a naive in this field with zero knowledge about data science. I took help from my seniors and my batchmates to start the work. My mentor provided me with the resources to read and learn. Firstly, I had to learn Python for this project and install necessary software. I learnt how to plot graphs which I was totally unaware of. Google and Stackoverflow came to my rescue every time I had an error in my code. My friends helped me a lot to carry my work forward as I got stuck every now and then. They rectified my mistakes and guided me on how to move forward in this project.
The Round-2 was conducted on 24th of July, 2018. I had completed my project two weeks before and now the main part was to make a presentation of my project. There was a template provided by Tata steel for this presentation and there was a limitation on the number of slides. So I had to frame the complete work of 1 month in these 12 slides. In about a week I completed making my presentation. My mentor, seniors and friends helped me to review and make necessary changes tothe presentation. The main challenge was to present in front of the panel of judges and jury members. I had one week for practising. I made notes on what to speak and then rehearsed infront of my friends and even the mirror.
Round-2:
On 23rd of July, I reached Jamshedpur for the finale. Next day morning, all 50 participants presented their solution based on the assigned case study infront of their respective domain panels. At around 4 pm, the top ten students were declared who had achieved the scholarship worth ₹200000, a paid internship during the third year and a Pre-Placement Offer based on some academic criteria. On hearing my name in the list, I experienced the unbounded happiness in my life for the first time. The confidence which I got from this selection motivated me a lot to give my best in the Grand Finale which was to be conducted on 26th of July.
Grand Finale:
Now came the grand finale round, the top ten students were to present their solution infront of the seniors dignitaries of Tata steel. We rehearsed for 2–3 hours. In the afternoon, Grand finale began. It was my turn. I went on the stage with confidence and presented the solution to the jury members. Question-Answer round also went well. At around 6 pm, results were out and I was declared the 1st runner-up. This was the happiest moment of my life.
We clicked photographs with our mates and an interview was taken by Times Now for their channel. It all happened for the first time in my life. I was excited and my confidence took a level up. I could witness the outcome of all the efforts, hardwork and dedication in my parent’s eyes. Meeting my mentor and the 10 minutes talk with him encouraged me to work ahead in this field of Data Science.
The whole journey proved to be a turning point in my life and I had a great experience meeting people from different parts of India.
