Projects

Publications

PDF preprints or reprints are provided for publications.

Case Study

Invento Robotics: Launching Humanoid Robots

  • Harshvardhan, M. and Kumar B. (2020), "Invento Robotics: Launching Humanoid Robots". Case study accepted by Ivey Cases, Ivey Business School.

  • Harshvardhan, M. and Kumar B. (2020), "Teaching Note: Invento Robotics: Launching Humanoid Robots". Teaching note accepted by Ivey Cases, Ivey Business School.

Peer-reviewed Book Chapters

Dynamic GP: Application to Malaria Vaccine Coverage Prediction

  • Ranjan, P and Harshvardhan, M. (2020), “The Evolution of Dynamic Gaussian Process Model with Applications to Malaria Vaccine Coverage Prediction". Accepted by Springer. Eds: Hanagal, Latpatel, Chandra, and Chandra. [arXiv: 2012.11124]

Statistical Modelling and Analysis of the Computer-Simulated Datasets

  • Harshvardhan, M., & Ranjan, P. (2019). Statistical Modelling and Analysis of the Computer-Simulated Datasets. In B. Gupta, & D. Agrawal (Eds.), Handbook of Research on Cloud Computing and Big Data Applications in IoT (pp. 202-228). Hershey, PA: IGI Global. doi:10.4018/978-1-5225-8407-0.ch011 [arXiv: 2012.11122]

LaTeX Templates

Post-modern Report

IIM Indore Report Template

IIM Indore Official Slides Template

  • M Harshvardhan. (June 2019). IIM Indore LaTeX Slides Template.

The template was shared with faculty members by Prof Sujay Mukhoti and Prof Pritam Ranjan. Please contact me for the source codes. [Sample Slides - PDF]

Internships

Internships

Omnistore, Tata Consultancy Services (TCS), Retail Division

  • Researched retail trends and designs for the complete value chain to pinpoint personalisation and unification as twin-driving forces

  • Developed strong domain knowledge in retail operations, technologies, modern point-of-sales and unified commerce

  • Involved in understanding customer needs, articulating which solutions fit requirements and how to develop them with AI and ML techniques

  • Created a prospective list of 20+ potential technology partners and alliances; performed their comprehensive analysis based on offerings

  • Elicited and synthesised the future of retail stores and transformations needed urgently

  • Performed exploratory data analysis of 500+ companies and technologies exhibited in NRF Big Show over the last 3+ years

Gaussian Models and Correlation Structures

  • Studied different forms of Gaussian models and their theoretical foundations

  • Studied various correlation structures and understood their sensitivity to hyperparameters

  • Performed simulation-based research to quantify and compare stabilities of correlation structures

  • Compared prediction accuracy and reliability of major R packages for Gaussian process modelling

  • PDF Report: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1VTIACeDz_p6_4IzkNp2wu3hqsbL25rrx/view?usp=sharing

Near-singularity of Gaussian Correlation Matrices

  • Understanding and establishing a quantified measure of near-singularity for correlation matrices

  • Influence of hyperparameters - design size, dimension and parameter - on near-singularity of correlation matrices

  • Possibilities of getting rid of near-singularity without compromising on original prediction accuracy

  • Learnt LaTeX from scratch for crafting reports and presentation related to this internship

  • PDF Report: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1wC2zS_XtbOJ0froNdZRUiOoHPXn_CemM/view?usp=sharing

Market Planning and Business Development, Kriger Campus

  • Designed strategies and expansion plan encompassing 10,000+ IIT-IIM students and onboarding them on the Kriger Campus platform

  • Built a financial model and forecasted revenue, profits and breakeven for various possible scenarios

  • Organised a team of four together to upgrade the platform's database and managed the logistical requirements of vendor change

  • Coordinated trust-based referral marketing campaign with 1,000+ participants reaching 18,000+ students across the country

Live Projects

Bliss Lifesciences LLP, Indore

  • Surveyed 300+ participants and interviewed around 20 stakeholders like nutrition experts, gym trainers, etc.

  • Analysed data gathered using SPSS to decipher awareness of nutrition products, know customer segments, target groups and their behavioural characteristics

  • Studied product's competitors, marketing platforms and distribution channels to recommend a new digital marketing strategy

Hostel Postman, IIM Indore

  • Designed a spreadsheet-based dashboard for automating sending personalised reminders about their parcels and couriers received

  • The system handled 1000+ campus residents and 10+ courier companies, severely reducing the manual workload and saving everyone from generic spams

Chai Kaapi

  • Examined information collected from more than 3.27 lac point-of-sales receipts from 11 national stores of Chai Kaapi and performed exploratory data analysis

  • Measured summary metrics, footfall trends, possible repeat value boost, customer segmentation using clustering and measuring product affinities for common baskets

  • Recommended new product baskets, revised store opening timings and metrics to identify valuable customers, with forecasted revenue growth of 40%

Smart Villages Indore, Government of Madhya Pradesh

  • Created bilingual audio-video content for classes 6th to 8th for Science and English by digitising NCERT textbooks

  • Created, managed and maintained program's Hindi website using WordPress for four months

Junglewala Wildlife Safari, Indore

  • Evaluated prospective national and foreign market expansion strategies for wildlife safaris during off-seasons in India

  • Diagnosed their website using Google Insights and Amazon Alexa website assistants, recommended ways for speed upgrade and search engine optimisation

Coding

Github

Here is my Github link: https://github.com/harshvardhaniimi. You can find my selected coding-related projects there.

Selected Projects

Alpha, Delta, Gamma, Spindle and Theta Waves | R

Recently, I came across "Brain Waves" that aid in learning, concentration or sleep. I created my own set of pure waves using R. I will upload them soon.

Exploring My Spotify Listening | R

This was my version of Spotify Wrapped using R. Check it out: https://www.harsh17.in/blog/exploring-my-spotify-listening

Sentiment Analysis of Tweets | R

I used rtweet package to find sentiment of tweets around specific topics. Check it out: https://www.harsh17.in/blog/twitter-sentiments

Quotes Generator | R

The aim was to make a quotes generator website which we take with our breakfast. I used SelectorGadget and rvest to scrap quotes from Wikipedia page. Then I used Unsplash API to get a random nature background image. Finally, I use Shiny to combine all of these and make a webapp out of it. Go, check it out! https://harshvardhan.shinyapps.io/quotes_generator/

Accessed at https://github.com/harshvardhaniimi/quote-generator.

iPhone Prices vs Country | R

I scrapped macroeconomic data (like GDP per capita, Gini coefficient, etc.) for around 150 countries from Wikipedia, World Bank and IMF. I also scrapped iPhone prices for all the countries. Finally vouched to find some relation between the two.

Accessed at https://github.com/harshvardhaniimi/iphone-country-prices.

LaTeX Assignment | LaTeX

This is a modern template for college assignment applicable mostly for undergraduate students. The template is built on paper class, details of which can be found at https://ctan.org/tex-archive/macros/latex/contrib/paper?lang=en. However, this template changes the "look-and-feel" of "paper" class to suit regular needs of college students. The template has been published on Overleaf Gallery now.

Accessed at https://github.com/harshvardhaniimi/latex-assignment.

Technical Efficiency of Indian Higher Educational Institutes | R

Measuring efficiency of major Indian higher educational institutes including Indian Institutes of Technology and Indian Institutes of Management. We also suggested policy measures that should be undertaken by the government to improve college education standards and improve efficiency of the institutes.

Accessed at https://github.com/harshvardhaniimi/indian-higher-education.

Central Limit Theorem Demonstration | R

Few months ago, I gave a presentation on R Shiny Apps to an FPM (PhDs) class. Although the session was quite brief in itself, we developed a small central limit theorem demonstrator. It's not feature rich or anything; just serves the purpose of "seeing" central limit theorem. Accessed at https://github.com/harshvardhaniimi/shiny-clt.

Fake ID Generator | R

The name says it all. Based on algorithms which dictate identification details. Not intended for illegal usages.

Accessed at https://github.com/harshvardhaniimi/fake-id.

Academic Projects

Selected MBA Projects

Private Trains in India (Group Project, Managing Public-Private Partnerships)

We did comprehensive analysis of private trains operations in Delhi-2 cluster. We found operational feasibility of the project (time-tables, rakes, maintenance, cluster overlaps), bidding competition and risks. We also valued the project using NPV and IRR techniques, finding it feasible in most circumstances.

Predicting House Prices in New Delhi (Group Project, Applied Predictive Analytics)

We attempted to predict price of houses in New Delhi based on details such as number of bedrooms, area, etc using regression, splines, neural network and random forest methods. Tools used: R.

Explaining and Predicting Carbon Output of India (Group Project, Statistical Analyses with R)

In this project, we used linear regression to explain sectoral carbon output over the years from 1970 to 2018. We also used neural network models for predicting carbon outputs, given sectoral GDP.

Improving India’s Trade Balance in Travel and Tourism (Group Project, International Trade and WTO)

We studied India's tourism market and ways to improve different kinds of tourism including medical tourism and adventure tourism. We also recommended changes reflecting COVID-19 pandemic.

Digital Strategy of Bliss Lifesciences (Group Live Project, Marketing Research)

We studied dietary supplements industry, customers and advertisement channels to recommend complete digital strategy on social media and ecommerce. Tools used: SPSS.

Leadership studies – in my opinion – are primarily driven by survivorship bias. Because of the sheer lack of examples, we tend to study those who succeed and not those who fail. The failure lessons are of the last failure or career-ending failure of the successful leaders. This paper analyses why there is too much positivity is leadership theory and how authenticity might not be end-all approach.

Valuation of IDFC Bank (Group Project, Financial Institutions and Markets)

We assessed a new-age bank using CAMELS framework and valued its stock using discounted cash flow methods and relative valuation methods.

Rural Engagement Programme at Jamthi, Borgaon (5-day Group Site Visit)

We observed various ongoing watershed projects at the Jamthi village – learning about rural life in India, socio-cultural phenomenon like migration, insider-outsider perspectives among others.

Gillette, P&G India (Group Project, Marketing–2)

We did a thorough research study and understood Gillette's India operations through a variety of marketing concepts and frameworks like the brand promise, brand elements, product differentiation, distribution channels, pricing, promotions, communication strategies. We also compared their strategy with their competitors like Nivea India, Vi-John, Bombay Shaving Company, etc.

Rentif-I: Local Equipments Renting Platform (Group Project, Entrepreneurship Orientation)

We designed a business model around sharing different equipments with locals and other residents — partly owned by us, others by users.

Solar Energy in India (Group Project, Industry Awareness)

We analysed the solar energy industry in India, and the impending opportunities and threats. We also analysed the major companies in the industry.


Selected Undergraduate Projects

Technical Efficiency of Indian Higher Educational Institutes (CIS)

Tamanna Gupta and I worked together under Prof Rahul Nilkantan to estimate technical efficiency through the DEA technique of major Indian technical and management institutes. Finally, we suggested policy changes that would be best from an economic point of view.

Causal Relationship between Economically Conservative and Politically Conservative (Individual Term Project, Research Methodology)

I worked under Prof Ajit Phadnis to find a causal relationship between people who are economically conservative and politically conservative from World Values Survey Data using R as a statistical tool for analysis.

The​ ​extent​ ​of​ ​responsibility​ ​of​ ​the​ ​Indian​ ​Government​ ​towards​ ​Illegal Immigrants​ ​in​ ​India (Group Term Project, Philosophy III)

We worked under the guidance of Prof Biswanath Swain to analyse the issue of illegal immigration from various sound ethical perspectives.

Econometric Analysis of Investment by Government on Education (Group Term Project, Econometrics)

We worked under the guidance of Prof Debojyoti Majumdar to use STATA software and perform various statistical tests on it. We found the effect of increasing the expenditure on education by the state government on their per capita GDP. Finally, we performed several high-end econometric analysis techniques to test our preliminary results.

Poster on Water Conservation (Group Project, Critical Thinking and Writing Skills I)

We worked under the guidance of Prof Shweta Kushal and Prof Dibyaduti Roy to develop this poster.

The Un-social media: Effect on Behaviour (Group Term Paper, Psychology I)

We worked under the guidance of Prof Shruti Tewari to develop this paper. The term paper discussed the effects of social media in day to day behaviour of teenagers and youth.

The Essence of Life (Group Term Paper, Philosophy I)

We worked under the guidance of Prof Biswanath Swain to develop this paper. This was, so far, the most interesting paper on which we worked. Questioning the basic pillars of life goals was confounding to us, as well as to respondents of our study.

Entrepreneurship and Fun

Prahar: Personalised Goods Business

Along with my friend Pradeep Charan, I ran a poster printing and customised goods business with a turnover of ₹70,000, serving more than 800 orders in less than six months. We moved on for the lack of time but the business idea was picked up by many other ventures on campus.

Podcast: Deconstruct by Syntax IIM Indore

When I was the coordinator of Syntax (IIM Indore's IT and Gaming SIG), we started a podcast to interview experts from a variety of fields. We planned to host open hand discussions on innovation and tech-economy. I could only release one episode and let's see what the juniors do! You can listen to the first episode, interview of Prof Enzo Orsingher on Spotify, Google Podcast, etc.

Statistical Visualisation of Battles in Game of Thrones

I worked on some elementary data visualisation methods to showcase the peculiarities of battles as they occurred in the famous TV show, Game of Thrones.

Comparing Computational Speeds of MRAN and CRAN R

If you use R, you might know that CRAN is the organiser and host for resources of R. However, private companies like Microsoft have recently undertaken projects like MRAN R that use open source methods to speed up most functions of R. This project was about comparing the computational speeds of both the version. I found that MRAN R is much faster for multi-threaded operations and now I use that on my PC. For Macs, both have the same results, as Macs have enhanced interoperability and multithreading by default.