Riding the Sinusoidal wave with Prakash Bulusu

In this episode, Gayatri is in conversation with Prakash Bulusu, Vice President Customer Behavior Analytics at Amazon Inc. 

• Prakash works with Peta bytes of data on a regular basis to identify and predict what consumers would like to use
• His early memory of computers started with using AC while playing Nintendo games and amazed at the computer networks in his alumni NIT Trichy
• Shares an interesting story on why he took up his MS after 3.5 years of undergrad. His fascination in e-commerce and US education system that grounded towards curiosity
• Understanding that the future is in e-commerce and large data processing was a big step from his internship in ISRO
• Decision to shift from sunny Florida to a green Seattle knowing Amazon and the possibilities of e-commerce 
• Drivers for moving into search and data based modeling for Microsoft and looking at early DevOps model
• Talks about moving away from compile satisfaction[code named as compile sook] to Release satisfaction
• Being a first time manager encouraging the team and mentoring in a subtle way
• Interdisciplinary thinking together processes aided by the three page narrative - stepping away from command-control ppt to a democratic narrative 
• Strengthening one’s communication skills using the clarity of thought was the biggest leap that Prakash took the longest
• Understanding the changes in the data sciences is like knowing the sinusoidal wave - sometimes its asynchronous and sometimes its in sync. 
• Prakash talks about decision making in the customer behavior analytics - machines taking more decisions objectively and humans weighing in where ambiguity plays a part
• Prakash shares how future would be in the convergence of Quantum computing, Data sciences and 5G with ethics being the foundation
• One wisdom Prakash wants to share is that Technology is rapidly changing and each of us have to adapt quickly with that

Prakash Bulusu, Senior leader with a proven track record across Software, Analytics and Consumer Business in E-Commerce, Search, Marketing and Online applications.

Specialties: Large scale distributed and data intensive Software Engineering, Data Analytics, Machine Learning Applications, Data Platform, Computational Marketing, Understanding Customer behavior, Data Science, Email Marketing automation, Product Search relevance and Data quality, e-commerce, Experimentation (A/B testing) and Experimentation Platform, Software test design and automation.

Prakash Bulusu can be contacted at https://www.linkedin.com/in/prakashb/