Tech infra is costly, frugality is a big part of strategy: Flipkart's Datar

Extracting efficiency and managing costs, while passing on the savings to customers, is what e-commerce at scale is about, says Mayur Datar, chief data scientist, Flipkart

Flipkart is one of the earliest players to have bet on artificial intelligence, which has permeated all aspects of life. The company’s chief data scientist, Mayur Datar, has been driving all AI-related initiatives at the firm since he joined it in 2015. In an interview with Aryaman Gupta and Shivani Shinde, he describes how the homegrown e-commerce giant is leveraging AI, machine learning and data science to offer India-specific use cases. Edited excerpts:

How has Flipkart’s AI/machine learning landscape evolved over the years?

When I say AI, it also means ML, analytics, statistics, and more. When I joined Flipkart in