Datawallet: The Power of Data in the Hands of People

Serafin Lion Engel, CEO

Every year, thousands of aspiring entrepreneurs flock to Silicon Valley, each nurturing a dream and a vision of how their technology can re-imagine the world. But very few of these ideas see the light of day, probably because they miss the mark when it comes to offering a solution to a real-world problem faced by real-life people. The story of Serafin Lion Engel, however, beats all odds as this 25-year-old CEO is bringing power to the people through his company Datawallet. The Datawallet application allows users to take charge and monetize their data—by engaging in a consumer to business (C2B) relationship— while empowering organizations with access to a vast data universe of first-hand insights.

Engel credits a large part of his success and inspiration to Draper University, a startup boot camp founded by Tim Draper. They say that brilliance can't hide and the same reflected when Engel pitched his idea to a panel of 40 venture capitalists at Draper University and instantly stoked their interest. Presently, backed by Silicon Valley's big kahuna investors such as Tim Draper and Marc Benioff, Datawallet's blockchain powered personal data management platform is re-envisioning data exchange.

Today, in the age of information, patrons leave a digital footprint with every credit card purchase, text message, and social media interaction. However, what's disturbing is that information brokers stealthily collect data shadows that are oftentimes fragmented and based on probabilistic matching models and sell it to corporations for thousands of dollars. Data creators are completely in the dark about who is sourcing their data, for what purpose, and most importantly they are kept aloof from any share in the profits. The current data brokerage model also poses severe risks and quality issues for companies as there is no way to verify the authenticity of the information provided.

It's time that people reclaim the value that they create online and take charge of their data.

We are deconstructing the entire concept of data monopoly and creating a mutually beneficial relationship between data creators and enterprises

In that vein, Datawallet is a game changer in the industry as it not only restores trust and control for users but provides businesses with complete and accurate data profiles. “We are deconstructing the entire concept of data monopoly and creating a mutually beneficial relationship between consenting parties, grounded on equality and fairness,” mentions Engel. The idea for Datawallet struck Engel a lot earlier than its inception and the story goes back to his college days. Working as a researcher for bigwigs like Phillips and BMW, Engel realized that even industry behemoths were still subscribing to legacy methods such as trend analysis for data collection. “Often there is a gap of a few years between the time an idea is conceived till the final product is introduced in the market, which makes the research and findings obsolete.” Taking a cue from his observations, the solution devised by Engel is simple yet ingenious.

Upon registering on the Datawallet application, users can share information as well as link multiple data sources from social media, online commerce, and offline transactions to create a unified data set. A user only needs to actively upload a sales receipt and link it to the application, while all other data is automatically and passively captured by Datawallet. This decentralized data transfer, in turn, unlocks cross-platform, user-specific, historic as well as real-time information that was previously inaccessible for companies. It goes without saying that Datawallet gives people full visibility into who wants to access their data and for what purpose.

To achieve this uncompromisingly transparent personal data marketplace, the company leverages blockchain technology that eliminates the need for middlemen. Since users have the authority to build encryption and a private key into all data sourcing pipelines, any third party service provider cannot utilize an individual's data without consent. A user can grant permission to access data only via smart encrypted data contracts that require them to decrypt the data points they agree to sell, typically in the form of data token exchange and hold the resulting data in escrow until the terms of a contract have been satisfied.

“We want our clients to understand that we have no interest and business owning their data. We only get paid when we can promote a value add data-token exchange,” affirms Engel.

Since data by itself is meaningless, the company utilizes dx- Insights, a proprietary analytics platform through which data is standardized, analyzed and enriched to derive key consumer and market insights. While several solution providers in the market are positioning themselves with a data sourcing tool, which although is easy to use, mines data in the raw format. This not only results in privacy concerns on the user's side but extracting data analytics from vast reserves of unstructured data is burdensome for enterprises as well. The platform comprises state-of-the-art algorithms that parse all relevant messages to filter out the top trending topics, rendering Datawallet as the most powerful solution in the market at present.

No doubt Datawallet is emerging as the solution of choice for all industries starting from market research firms, advertising, loan underwriting, to psychographic insurance since all insights derived from Datawallet is 7,400x richer than conventional data capture methodologies. “The bigger push for us is to unify access to data. With Datawallet the ability to deliver a leading-edge solution will be now based on innovation and not company size or financial capability,” adds Engel. Moreover, IDC estimates that by 2020, transactions over the internet will reach 450 billion per day with the increasing adoption of IoT. “Given these conditions, Datawallet is the passport to the next generation of the internet,” asserts Engel.

The coming days hold even brighter prospects for Engel and his brainchild. Engel's indomitable spirit is mirrored in the culture at Datawallet and the team is constantly encouraged to set ambitious goals and not feel weighed down by limiting beliefs. By the third quarter of this year, the company will launch an API that will allow developers to build AI-driven applications centered on personal data. The company also has plans of releasing a browser-based version for maximum user benefit. “The future is all about going big or going home and the latter is not an option,” ends Engel.