Why do we need data science in e-commerce?

Speaker: Shourya Roy

Abstract

In recent years e-commerce platforms have grown significantly riding on technological advancements, digital spread, and innovative business models. Through this growth, the platforms have been generating an astronomical amount of data and leveraging the same to leapfrog by data-driven insights. Advances in data science in general as well as in specific areas such as deep learning, reinforcement learning, etc. helped scale up their operations as hundreds of thousands of sellers sold millions of products to hundreds of millions of customers by over tens of thousands of pin codes through massive multi-echelon supply chain networks. However, the general understanding of the applicability of data science in e-commerce has been limited to a few popular ones such as recommendations and search. In this talk, I will provide an overview of the expanse and potential of data science in e-commerce, building on some of the recent trends in online shopping in India. For a few use-cases, I will highlight the challenges and research directions from the experiences of solving those in one of the largest e-commerce companies of India and the world. I will conclude by bringing out how the data science landscape is evolving, especially with the advancement of generative AI technologies.

Bio

Dr. Shourya Roy is a Senior Research Director at Flipkart where he had been responsible for AI/ML/Data Science strategy and execution of a number of key initiatives across multiple business units. Currently, he is leading the Supply Chain Planning and Forecasting initiatives managing Product, Engineering, and Data Science teams. Prior to joining Flipkart in 2020, he spent over 18 years in various roles in IBM Research and Xerox Research as well as most recently, heading the AI Labs at American Express. Shourya’s technical expertise is broadly in AI/ML and specifically in NLP where he is a well-known thought leader. He has been granted 30+ patents and his work has led to 80+ publications with about 2500 citations. Shourya is an ACM Distinguished Member and currently serves as the President of the India Chapter of ACM SIGKDD (IKDD). Shourya is a proud alumnus of CSA, IISc where he did his Ph.D. under the supervision of Prof. Y. Narahari.