Data Chatter

Karthik Shashidhar
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Welcome to Season Two of Data Chatter. The podcast is hosted by Karthik Shashidhar, cofounder and CEO of Babbage Insight. Apart from this, he is a blogger, newspaper columnist, book author and a former data and strategy consultant. In this season, Karthik Shashidhar talks to business leaders about all things data - how they get insight from data, their frustrations with data teams, what they expect, and how they imagine AI to transform the data insight space. You can follow him on twitter at @karthiks, and check out his company at babbageinsight.com

  1. 28/10/2025

    FP&A Head of Qualtrics on Turning Insights into Impact | Aswin Saravanan

    In the second episode of Data Chatter Season 2, Aswin Saravanan shares how the data -> impact value-chain works, his framework to guide decision making for business leaders and challenges with fragmented data along with tips on navigating the same.

    29 min

  2. 14/10/2025

    Ex-Amazon Business Leader on Data Culture | Liz Gebhard

    In Episode 1 of Data Chatter Season 2, meet Liz Gebhard, the Interim Transformation Officer at World of Books. She previously spent a decade in leadership roles at Amazon. Liz shares her storied experience with data, beginning her corporate career at Target in supply chain and technology development during the early 2000s era of nascent online retail. Her move to Amazon marked a significant shift, requiring her to learn SQL and self-serve data due to the culture’s reliance on data-driven decision-making and data-backed arguments. There is a lot for you to learn from her effort to build the first Business Intelligence Engineering organization within her business unit at Amazon. In this podcast, she explains how effective teams are inherently part of the organization, focusing on solving tough business problems rather than maintaining transactional relationships.She also discusses the criticality of having diverse perspectives - in terms of gender, ethnicity, and skill sets - to improve business decisions and mitigate risk, especially when building products like healthcare solutions, and addresses the necessity of auditing generative AI outputs despite its role as a powerful enabler for efficiency.

    38 min
  3. Season 2 Trailer

    30/09/2025 · BONUS

    Season 2 Trailer

    Data Chatter is back with a (belated) second season! In this season, Karthik Shashidhar, now cofounder and CEO of Babbage Insight, chats with business leaders on how they make decisions using data, and how they hope AI will transform the industry

    2 min
  4. 16. Teaching Data Through Stories

    12/01/2022

    16. Teaching Data Through Stories

    The phrase “using data to tell stories” is so commonly used nowadays that it runs the risk of becoming a cliche, if it hasn’t become one already. This episode’s guest flips this logic around - instead of using data to tell stories, he uses stories to teach data science! Arvind Venkatadri is a faculty member at Srishti Manipal School of Art, Design and Technology. His research/teaching interests include TRIZ, Computation in R, Design using Open Source Electronics Hardware, and Complexity Science. He is part of the School of Foundation Studies at SMI. This is a very wide ranging conversation. We talk about, among other things, The Three Musketeers, Lawrence of Arabia and Legally Blonde. We talk about how Arvind leverages all of these to teach his students data science and logic and game theory. At a time when the field of data science is rife with “pile stirring”, where a large section of practitioners treat it as an extension of software engineering, Arvind’s approach, centred on stories and the human experience, is really refreshing. His approach also gives a pointer on how to widen the base in terms of attracting people into data science.  I must apologise for one thing - this conversation was recorded during Deepavali in November 2021, so you can occasionally hear the sound of firecrackers in the background. I really hope you can get past that and listen to Arvind’s stories. Show Notes 00:03:00: Arvind’s journey into teaching Data Science in an art school 00:05:45: Teaching data science to art students 00:15:45: Teaching statistics through art and stories. Wassily Kandinsky 00:23:00: Teaching coding through art 00:31:00: Shapes and colours and emotions 00:44:00: Lawrence of Arabia (can’t say more here in the description!) 00:50:00: Data science and the human experience Links: Arvind’s homepage Arvind on Twitter Arvind’s course on R for artists and designers An intro to Wassily Kandinsky's work Data Chatter is a podcast on all things data. It is a series of conversations with experts and industry leaders in data, and each week we aim to unpack a different compartment of the "data suitcase". The podcast is hosted by Karthik Shashidhar. He is a blogger, newspaper columnist, book author and a former data and strategy consultant. Karthik currently heads Analytics and Business Intelligence for Delhivery, one of India’s largest logistics companies. You can follow him on twitter at @karthiks, and read his blog at noenthuda.com

    55 min
  5. 15. On Data And Journalism

    22/12/2021

    15. On Data And Journalism

    There is a conception, or misconception, that journalists are not good at maths. It is rather common to see newspaper headlines and graphics that make basic mathematical and logical errors. On the other hand, in the last decade or so, we have seen a massive rise in “data journalism”. With more and more data being available, journalists are able to write stories exclusively based on data. How do these two square off? To answer this, we have Sukumar Ranganathan, editor in chief of the Hindustan Times. He was previously editor of Mint, of which he was one of the founding editors. It was while he was at Mint that he gave a big push to the then nascent field of “data journalism”, inviting writers such as HowIndiaLives, Rukmini S and myself to write data-backed pieces for Mint. He has previously worked in editorial leadership roles at The Hindu Businessline and Business Today. Sukumar has degrees in chemical engineering, maths, and business administration, and is interested in mathematics, science and technology, the history of business, new media, and data-based political journalism. He reads and collects comic books and is an amateur birder. He tweets under the ID @HT_ed Show Notes: 00:03:15: Are journalists really bad at maths? 00:16:30: Impact of bad data on public policy, and information theory 00:21:00: How data in journalism has changed in the last 20-25 years 00:23:00: The data journalism story 00:31:15: Judging a data story 00:45:30: Advice to budding data journalists Data Chatter is a podcast on all things data. It is a series of conversations with experts and industry leaders in data, and each week we aim to unpack a different compartment of the "data suitcase". The podcast is hosted by Karthik Shashidhar. He is a blogger, newspaper columnist, book author and a former data and strategy consultant. Karthik currently heads Analytics and Business Intelligence for Delhivery, one of India’s largest logistics companies. You can follow him on twitter at @karthiks, and read his blog at noenthuda.com

    50 min

  6. 19/10/2021

    14. Programming Data Science: R vs Python

    There are two dominant programming languages used for data science nowadays - R and Python, each having its own set of loyal users. Both have their own strengths and weaknesses. In this episode, we look at what each langauge is good and bad at, what kind of people are more likely to use each, and how being able to program in both and switch seamlessly can indeed be a superpower. Today’s guest is Abdul Majed Raja RS, a Data Scientist at Atlassian. Abdul Majed likes to call himself an Analytics Consultant with over a decade of experience helping organisations solve their business problems. He's also a Content Creator trying to help newcomers navigate the Data Science space easily and learn continuously. You can find him on Twitter and on Youtube at 1littlecoder.  Show Notes:  00:03:00: How Abdul got into analytics 00:05:30: MS Excel in data science 00:07:45: When to use R and when to use Python 00:17:00: What data scientists can learn from software engineers 00:24:30: Graphics and visualisations in R and Python 00:26:45: Machine learning in R and Python 00:29:15: Why the Indian market in Data Science leans towards Python 00:34:45: Working with databases 00:37:30: Building dashboards in R and Python 00:47:00: Working with R *and* Python at the same time 00:51:30: What about Excel and Julia? Links I don't like Notebooks - Joel Grus  -  Interface between R and Python - reticulate. Julia Silge Youtube Channel for latest Tidymodels tutorials Advantages of Using R Notebooks For Data Analysis Instead of Jupyter Notebooks - Max Woolf Data Chatter is a podcast on all things data. It is a series of conversations with experts and industry leaders in data, and each week we aim to unpack a different compartment of the "data suitcase". The podcast is hosted by Karthik Shashidhar. He is a blogger, newspaper columnist, book author and a former data and strategy consultant. Karthik currently heads Analytics and Business Intelligence for Delhivery, one of India’s largest logistics companies. You can follow him on twitter at @karthiks, and read his blog at noenthuda.com

    1h 1m
  7. 13: Is this real, Data Science, or is it a fantasy?

    12/10/2021

    13: Is this real, Data Science, or is it a fantasy?

    Over the last decade, we have seen tremendous advances in big data, data science, artificial intelligence and machine learning. Every compnay wants to be a tech-first comapny now, and wants to “do data science". Companies can probably double their valuation by just adding a  “.ai" to their names. Companies that actually use artificial intelligence and machine learning maybe have an even higher premium on their valuations. However, is Data Science worth the hype? Is AI going to take over the world?  And why is data science being eaten by computer science? What happned to classical analytics, operations resarch and statistics? This week’s guest is someone who did data science even before the phrase had b een invented. Amaresh Tripathy is SVP and Analytics Business Leader at Genpact. Till recently he was a Partner with PWC, leading the firm’s Data & Analytics Consulting, and helped build a $500mm business. Previously, Amaresh founded and co-led the Information and Analytics Practice for Diamond Management & Technology Consultants, and also serves as Adjunct Professor of Data Science and Business Analytics at the University of North Carolina, Charlotte. Amaresh has helped Fortune 500 companies in multiple industries (healthcare, retail & consumer, communications) to help define and implement their analytics and AI strategies and institutionalize data enabled decision making.  He has led organizations to help embed analytics in their front, middle and back office functions and manage the change process. Show Notes: 00:03:00: Definitions - data science, artificial intelligence, machine learning, etc. 00:04:15: The rise of computer science and machine learning 00:10:15: The probelm with Kaggle, and the “race for accuracy” 00:11:30: How to scale analytics without doing bad data analysis 00:18:00: How selling data science has changed over the last decade 00:23:00: The interaction between business and Data Science 00:26:30: “Creating bilinguals at scale” 00:30:30: Machine learning trying to eat data science 00:39:00: Comparing data science practices across countries Links: Thomas Davenport and DJ Patil on Data Science as the “sexiest job of the 21st century” (2012 article) Hal Varian on statistics as a “sexy job” Data Chatter is a podcast on all things data. It is a series of conversations with experts and industry leaders in data, and each week we aim to unpack a different compartment of the "data suitcase". The podcast is hosted by Karthik Shashidhar. He is a blogger, newspaper columnist, book author and a former data and strategy consultant. Karthik currently heads Analytics and Business Intelligence for Delhivery, one of India’s largest logistics companies.  You can follow him on twitter at @karthiks, and read his blog at noenthuda.com/blog

    46 min
  8. 12. Carts and graphs: Storytelling through maps

    05/10/2021

    12. Carts and graphs: Storytelling through maps

    In this edition of data chatter, we will talk about maps. Maps are excellent devices for telling stories. Think of the maps you see around election times that show which parties won seats where. in fact, the first ever scatter plot - Dr. John Snow’s figure of cholera cases in London, was essentially a map. Or think of the famous map of Napoleon’s invasion of Russia. And telling stories through maps is an exercise in data science. Data overlaid on maps can help tell really powerful stories. And as we learn in today’s conversation, the process of mapping is no diferent from the process of data science. Our guest is Raj Bhagat Palanichamy, or as he calls himself “mapper for life”. Raj works for the World Resources Insitute India, where he leads projects on urban development, water resources and transport. In this conversation, Raj talks about his journey into mapping, how he makes his maps, and how WWE influences the way he tells his stories. Highlights: 00:03:00: Raj's journey into the world of maps and mapmaking 00:06:15: The process of creating maps to tell stories 00:12:30: Choosing colours 00:17:00: The importance of annotations in storytelling 00:23:15: Data, digitisation and tools 00:35:45: Taking inspiration from WWE to construct "stories" with maps 00:42:13: Mapping cities versus mapping landscapes 00:44:30: Where is mapping underrated and overrated? Raj's 30 day map challenge in 2020 Data Chatter is a podcast on all things data. It is a series of conversations with experts and industry leaders in data, and each week we aim to unpack a different compartment of the "data suitcase". The podcast is hosted by Karthik Shashidhar. He is a blogger, newspaper columnist, book author and a former data and strategy consultant. Karthik currently heads Analytics and Business Intelligence for Delhivery, one of India’s largest logistics companies.  You can follow him on twitter at @karthiks, and read his blog at noenthuda.com/blog

    51 min
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Trailer

About

Welcome to Season Two of Data Chatter. The podcast is hosted by Karthik Shashidhar, cofounder and CEO of Babbage Insight. Apart from this, he is a blogger, newspaper columnist, book author and a former data and strategy consultant. In this season, Karthik Shashidhar talks to business leaders about all things data - how they get insight from data, their frustrations with data teams, what they expect, and how they imagine AI to transform the data insight space. You can follow him on twitter at @karthiks, and check out his company at babbageinsight.com

Information

  • Creator
    Karthik Shashidhar
  • Years Active
    2021 - 2025
  • Episodes
    20
  • Rating
    Clean
  • Copyright
    © 0
  • Show Website
    Data Chatter