Shiva Vashishtha: From a Farming Family to Training 20,000+ Students in Data Analytics

Shiva Vashishtha is a data analytics mentor at Jobaaj Learnings who has trained more than 20,000 students across India. He comes from a farming family and built his path into technology and ed-tech through self-driven digital work rather than a conventional entry point.

Education and qualifications

Shiva grew up commuting roughly two hours to school in Agra and completed a B.Tech in Computer Science at a tier-3 college near Agra. In his 3rd year of college, he travelled to Jaipur to learn data science from Hitesh Chaudhary, a known name in the data science space, and used that period to build his first practical projects.

Work experience

In 11th standard, Shiva started a YouTube channel, which generated around ₹1.5 lakh in revenue and shaped his early interest in digital careers. In his first semester of college, he attended a digital marketing workshop and began working with digital marketing companies, and by his second semester he was conducting digital marketing seminars at other colleges.

He later joined Jobaaj as an intern and was promoted to Senior Manager based on his marketing and data experience. In that role, he helped set up Jobaaj Learnings, the company's ed-tech arm, overseeing its marketing and operations in its early stages.

Interests

Shiva sings, writes poetry, and continues to host poetry open-mic events in his city, alongside his work in public speaking and training.

Approach to work

Shiva's college workshops on topics like WordPress, digital marketing and Python typically drew up to around 100 students at a time. He now teaches close to 600 students a week in his data analytics workshops. His core advice to beginners is to build a clear learning roadmap and identify a specific subdomain within data before diving into individual tools and technologies.