Foreword

Data science is rapidly changing the world and the way we do business --be it retail, banking and financial services, publishing, pharmaceutical, manufacturing, and so on. Data of all forms is growing exponentially--quantitative, qualitative, structured, unstructured, speech, video, and so on. It is imperative to make use of this data to leverage all functions--avoid risk and fraud, enhance customer experience, increase revenues, and streamline operations.

Organizations are moving fast to embrace data science and investing a lot into high-end data science teams. Having spent more than 12 years in the BFSI domain, I get overwhelmed with the transition that the BFSI industry has seen in embracing analytics as a business and no longer a support function. This holds especially true for the fin-tech and digital lending world of which Jalaj and myself are a part of.

I have known Jalaj since her college days and am impressed with her exuberance and self-motivation. Her research skills, perseverance, commitment, discipline, and quickness to grasp even the most difficult concepts have made her achieve success in a short span of 4 years on her corporate journey.

Jalaj is a gifted intellectual with a strong mathematical and statistical understanding and demonstrates a continuous passion for learning the new and complex analytical and statistical techniques that are emerging in the industry. She brings experience to the data science domain and I have seen her deliver impressive projects around NLP, machine learning, basic linguistic analysis, neural networks, and deep learning. The blistering pace of the work schedule that she sets for herself, coupled with the passion she puts into her work, leads to definite and measurable results for her organization.

One of her most special qualities is her readiness to solve the most basic to the most complex problem in the interest of the business. She is an excellent team player and ensures that the organization gains the maximum benefit of her exceptional talent.

In this book, Jalaj takes us on an exciting and insightful journey through the natural language processing domain. She starts with the basic concepts and moves on to the most advanced concepts, such as how machine learning and deep learning are used in NLP.

I wish Jalaj all the best in all her future endeavors.

Sarita Arora
Chief Analytics Officer, SMECorner
Mumbai, India