Aloka’s team builds AI solutions at Walmart

It’s an exciting time to work in AI. The advances represented by ChatGPT have made it more so. Aloka Sudhodanan, senior manager of data science at Walmart Global Tech, Bengaluru, is in the thick of it. She says developing an AI-powered solution requires a good understanding of the domain or industry for which you are developing it.

Developing that expertise is not easy. In the retail industry, she says, each sub-sector – assortment, pricing, supply chain – is like an ocean. “A fresher who joins a retail company needs to work on a wide variety of problems to gather that kind of expertise,” she says.

Aloka, a BITS Pilani alumna, was introduced to AI when she was pursuing her Master’s degree. Her first job was at IBM India Research Laboratory, where she developed machine learning solutions for weather prediction, renewable energy, and crop modelling.