Shashi Kant

Mumbai · Maharashtra · India · skant@rbi.org.in

I am Assistant Adviser at Reserve Bank of India. I am passionate about the application of advanced data analytics, machine learning, geo-spatial analytics and data visualization to inform policy making. I am also a strong advocate of open source software and reproducible research.

Experience

Assistant Adviser

Reserve Bank of India
  • Analytical Notes - Used econometric tools to draft policy notes on issues concerning the central bank which cover broad areas like regulation, supervision, monetary policy and fintech. The policy notes are used by top management to make policies at the national level and set agenda for intervention at global fora like IMF and BIS.
  • Market Intellligence Reports - Prepared a snapshot of global economic and financial developments. Managed a team of technical experts from Reuters to deploy semi-automated market intelligence dashboards.
Apr 2014 - Present

Research Assistant

National University of Singapore
  • Federated Locker Project - The objective of the project was to provide business insights to Infocomm Media Development Authority's pilot implementation of Federated Locker Programme in Singapore to improve last mile delivery by installing lockers that can be used by all couriers. Used advanced analytics skills in R, Python and PowerBI to design evaluation metrics for quantifying the impact of the Locker Alliance project. Performed geospatial analysis with interactive map visualization to track locker utilization. Also used multinomial logit models to predict demand for lockers.
Jan 2020 - May 2020

Analytics Manager

ICICI Bank
  • Branch Cash Optimization - Excess cash hoarded by bank branches is opportunity lost to make high yielding investments by a bank. Used SQL to extract cash withdrawals data from bank's datawarehouse and implemented clustering and panel data models in R to predict cash withdrawals at branches to minimise cash holding at national level.
  • ATM Fraud Detection - Objective was to inform the bank's phone banking department about suspicious transactions as accurately as possible. Employed a decision tree based model in SAS E-Miner to identify fraudulent transactions on ATMs and flagged them to phone banking staff for proactive engagement with customers to find genuineness of the transaction.
Jul 2011 - Oct 2012

Education

National University of Singapore

Master of Science
Business Analytics
Aug 2019 - Aug 2020

Indian Statistical Institute

Master of Science
Quantitative Economics
Aug 2009 - May 2011

IIT Delhi

Bachelor of Technology
Engineering Physics
Aug 2005 - May 2009

Skills

Programming Languages & Tools
Workflow
  • Econometric Modelling
  • Time Series Analysis
  • Quantitative Risk Management
  • Business Analytics
  • Geospatial Analytics
  • Machine Learning
  • Network Analysis
  • Interactive Data Visualization

Interests

Apart from being a data science enthusiast and an economist, I enjoy travelling. When forced indoors, I prefer to watch movies and web series on the OTT platforms. I spend a large amount of my free time exploring open source libraries in R and Python for geo-spatial analytics.

Awards & Certifications

  • Certified GARP - FRM professional
  • Received the first prize for best article in IIBF Micro Research Competition
  • Received Golden Jubilee Scholarship Award from RBI for pursuing higher studies abroad
  • Certified Associate of Indian Institute of Bankers
  • Conducted sessions of financial literacy as part of Village Immersion Project during RBI induction
  • Received Graduate Student Scholarship from Indian Statistical Institute

Publications

  • Carbon Dioxide Emissions from India’s Manufacturing Sector: A Decomposition Analysis RBI Occasional Papers
  • Market Access and Firm Performance: Evidence Based On GIS Analysis Of Road Network And Manufacturing Plant-Level Data From India Asian Development Bank
  • Two Stage Stratified Random Sampling — Clearly Explained TDS
  • Statistical Indexes for Measuring Inequality TDS
  • How to Use Twitter Premium Search APIs for Mining Tweets TDS
  • Tracking Aerosol Pollution from Space TDS
  • Return on Physical Capital: Insights from Firm Level Data RBI Bulletin
  • Spatio-temporal Mapping of Seasonal Droughts
  • Extracting Solar Power Potential Using Global Solar Atlas TDS
  • Exploring Seasonal Variations in Vegetation Cover around Indian Subcontinent TDS
  • Obtaining Long Time series of Nighttime Satellite Pixel Values Medium
  • Neural Networks for Fashion Image Classification and Visual Search arXive
  • Crypto Currencies/Blockchain and the Banking System BankQuest
  • Network Analysis of NEFT transactions in India RBI Bulletin
  • Payment and Settlement: The Plumbing in the Architecture of Indian Financial System RBI Bulletin