RP Rakesh Poduval
Palakkad, Kerala · Available worldwide, remotely

Hi, I'm Rakesh Poduval

Data Science Leader & Statistician

I turn messy data into decisions. 16+ years across India and Switzerland, leading a team of 10+ data scientists, and now helping more teams with consulting, training and workshops in Statistics, R, Machine Learning and GenAI.

poduval.rakesh@icloud.com LinkedIn GitHub
Portrait of Rakesh Poduval
16+years in data science & statistics
10+data scientists led
2010building Swiss real-estate valuation models
2 yrson-site in Zurich, Switzerland

About

Most data problems aren't model problems.

They're statistics, clarity and trust problems.

I'm a statistician turned data science leader. Today I lead a team building Automated Valuation Models (AVMs) for Swiss real-estate finance, a regulated, business-critical setting where models have to be accurate and explainable.

My strengths are statistics at depth (M.Sc. Statistics, mixed and hierarchical models at ETH Zurich), production R (internal packages served as REST APIs, Shiny apps, automated reports) and a growing practice in GenAI and AI agents. I also run workshops and talks at universities across Kerala.

English · Hindi · Bengali · Malayalam

Work with me

How I can help

Consulting

Stuck on a data or business challenge? Sometimes you just need someone who has seen it before. Forecasting, pricing, modelling and GenAI, with honest, practical advice.

Training & workshops

Hands-on sessions in Statistics, R Programming, Machine Learning, and GenAI and AI Agents, plus Data Literacy for managers. For institutions, teams and freshers. Online or in person in Kerala, from one day to multi-week programmes.

Talks

Conferences, institutions and events. Practical statistics, honest GenAI lessons and what it takes to lead data teams.

Expertise

What I bring

Statistics

Hedonic regressionMixed modelsTime seriesModel validationBacktesting

Machine learning

Predictive modellingValuation (AVM)Text miningMLOps

GenAI & agents

LLM APIsRAGLangChainLangGraphCrewAILlamaIndexMCP

Engineering

R packages & ShinyPythonSQLDockerKubernetesAirflowCI/CD

Experience

Career timeline

  1. Apr 2026 – Present

    Senior Project Manager, Data Science & AI

    IMMO Information Technology · Swiss real-estate finance (IAZI AG / CIFI SA)

    Own delivery of data and AI products end to end, from a blank page to a shipped product. Lead a 10+ member team, own the core R products and AVMs through deployment, and build the team's first AI agents with Microsoft Agent Framework and MCP tools.

  2. Jul 2019 – Mar 2026

    Project Manager

    IMMO Information Technology

    Grew the data science team to 10+, developed AVMs and owned the legacy hedonic models through validation and production. Helped launch the model backtesting report, a client product supporting banks' internal model validation.

  3. Jul 2017 – Jul 2019

    Senior Consultant & Team Lead, Zurich

    IAZI AG / CIFI SA · on-site in Switzerland

    Built hedonic and ML models embedded in flagship AVM products, hardened R for production and led the India-based team supporting Swiss operations.

  4. Sep 2016 – May 2017

    Assistant Manager

    Genpact · Bengaluru

    Retail and CPG analytics: assortment, pricing and promotion analytics for global FMCG clients using SQL and R.

  5. Sep 2010 – Aug 2016

    Junior Statistician to Senior Statistician

    IMMO Information Technology · Panaji, Goa

    Where the journey began: regression-based valuation models and data pipelines on Swiss property data with R and SQL.

  6. Oct 2011 – Dec 2012

    Data Analyst

    Arbitron India (now Nielsen Audio) · Kochi

    Media audience measurement and market-research analytics with SPSS.

Projects

Things I've built

resquisse

A free R Shiny chart builder. Drag and drop to build charts, no R install needed.

RShinyData viz

Multi-agent AI ecosystem

Collaborating agents using LangGraph and CrewAI with planning, reasoning and tool use to solve compound tasks.

GenAIAgents

Product insight generator

A prompt-chained summariser that turns raw customer reviews into structured pros and cons.

GenAINLP

More R packages, Shiny apps and code samples on GitHub

Education

Foundations

  • M.Sc. StatisticsCUSAT, 2008–2010
  • B.Sc. StatisticsSt. Thomas' College, Thrissur, 2005–2008
  • Published researchKernel-based Estimation of Ageing Intensity Function: Properties and Applications

Certifications

Always learning

  • Advanced Certification in GenAI & Multi-Agent SystemsCoding Ninjas, 2026
  • Generative AI Foundation CertificateupGrad, 2026
  • Machine & Deep Learning: Practical IntroductionUniversity of Neuchâtel, 2018
  • Mixed (Hierarchical) Models in RETH Zürich, 2018
  • Advanced Business Analytics Using RIIT Hyderabad, 2014

Stuck on a data challenge, or planning a training session?

I'd be happy to hear about it. Send me an email and I'll get back to you.

poduval.rakesh@icloud.com