Open to opportunities

Sawan Kumar

@sawankumar1

Message

Data science leader specializing in credit risk, churn, propensity modeling, and NLP.

India

Message

What I'm looking for

I seek roles where I can lead end-to-end ML solutions in finance or fintech, drive measurable business impact, mentor teams, and scale robust, production-grade models.

I am a data science leader with 8+ years of experience building production ML models for financial services and large-scale merchant platforms, delivering measurable business impact in credit risk, cross-sell, churn prevention, and OCR-driven digitization. I have engineered high-dimensional feature sets (3K–5K+), tuned advanced models like XGBoost and deep learning architectures, and translated technical outputs into stakeholder-aligned, regulatory-compliant solutions that increased disbursals and improved risk metrics.

My background spans banking, fintech, and consulting where I led end-to-end projects — from vintage and forward-flow analysis to model validation and deployment — and drove outcomes such as ₹550 Cr monthly disbursals from pre-approved campaigns, 23% lift in monthly disbursals on CASA/DIY journeys, and strong gains in churn capture and conversion lifts for merchant programs. I focus on robust feature engineering, rigorous back- and out-of-time testing, and scalable delivery across cloud and big-data environments.

Experience

Work history, roles, and key accomplishments

Current

Deputy Vice President

Current

IndusInd Bank

Dec 2023 - Present (1 year 10 months)

Led development and deployment of multiple credit risk scorecards for unsecured lending and small-ticket business loans, delivering a 23% increase in monthly pre-approved personal loan disbursals and enabling ₹550 Cr monthly disbursals via pre-approved campaigns while reducing 3-month 0+ DPD risk by 25%.

XGBoost Python SQL Regulatory Compliance

Data Science Manager

Paytm

Oct 2021 - Dec 2023 (2 years 2 months)

Built churn and propensity models for large merchant cohorts (up to 4M) that captured 73–85% of responders in top deciles and generated business impacts including a 28 Cr GMV uplift and 2x CTR on high-propensity segments.

Churn Modeling Decision Trees Segmentation Python SQL A B Testing

Senior Data Scientist

Aptivaa Consulting

Oct 2019 - Sep 2021 (1 year 11 months)

Developed OCR and NLP solutions to digitize financial reports and perform sentiment analysis, achieving up to 95.5% numeric accuracy on OCR and ~83% accuracy on sentiment classification, and led model fine-tuning and intern supervision.

NLP Deep Learning Keras Python Flair Model Evaluation

Manager - Financial Services Research

TransUnion CIBIL

Jul 2017 - May 2019 (1 year 10 months)

Led portfolio benchmarking and industry-level credit analyses across large trade datasets (600M trades), improving credit portfolio analysis efficiency by 100% through optimized R and Hive code.

Hadoop R Hive Benchmarking SQL Market Research Data Processing

Education

Degrees, certifications, and relevant coursework

Indian Institute of Technology Bombay

Bachelor of Technology, Chemical Engineering

Activities and societies: Core Team Member, Student Alumni Relations Cell (Apr 2015 – Mar 2016); Alumni Secretary, Hostel 8 (Apr 2014 – Mar 2015); participated in performing arts and dance competitions.

Bachelor of Technology in Chemical Engineering from IIT Bombay, Class of 2017.