Ocean Protocol partner with Digital Commerce Intelligence (DCI) to build a data marketplace on Ocean HSV GTS Follow Jan 20 · 5 min read

Digital Commerce Intelligence (DCI) uses data-driven intelligence tools to help brands, retailers, and shoppers make smarter decisions. As DCI grows, it wants to offer more information and analytics to more people. But it needs to make sure they can manage the consent process and fairly incentivize customers for sharing their data. By building a data marketplace on Ocean, DCI can have a safe, secure platform to offer this type of data exchange.

At Digital Commerce Intelligence, they are committed to building South East Asia’s most intelligent digital commerce data platform that enables brands & retailers to better understand and effectively drive their eCommerce Performance.

By applying Data Science techniques to capture digital data points from the web, social and mobile world and then using Artificial Intelligence technology to analyze the data & generate commercial insights they will provide actionable data dashboards & predictive analytics to guide a brands digital commerce performance.

Kyriakos Zannikos, CEO of DCI, explains how they plan to take data sharing to the next level.

What is a data marketplace ?

A data marketplace is simply put an “ecommerce-like platform” where data can be “packaged” as a “product” and sold for a “price”. Because data is not a simple “product” though, certain provisions have to be considered and deployed in a data marketplace platform for it to provide for data to be exchanged in a trusted and secure way. Ideally, data could be downloaded, accessed for further processing (without being downloaded or transferred anywhere) or simply viewed, depending on the access rights the data provider is willing to offer. Each of these data asset offerings can come at a different price point too.

What’s also an interesting aspect of an advanced stage data marketplace, is that it can enable pretty much everyone to become (not only a buyer but also) a seller of any data asset they own (similar to how sites like Amazon or eBay enabled everyone to sell any product they wished online).

If you wonder how blockchain kicks in on all the above, it’s basically adding on the very much required layers of trust between the data transactors and ensuring the quality of the data exchanged. A data marketplace would otherwise be quite disadvantaged, if at all possible without the auditability, sharing control and transparency that a blockchain infrastructure can provide.

So what are we doing with this ?

As they say in business, it’s good to think big and start small. Digital Commerce Intelligence core business model is a subscription based data service as most (if not all) data market research businesses provide today. They are clear who their prospect clients are and how they can approach them. DCI are also clear what’s the value they can bring to the table and therefore can price services accordingly.

What DCI don’t know though (but suspect is the case!) is how many more businesses or organisations could benefit from their Digital Commerce data. For that reason they are launching an online data marketplace where certain chunks of their big data will be made available to the general public. Some will come for free and some for a price. On it’s very first stage all their data will be downloadable, however they will offer further testing & offer more accessibility options into the future.

Why are we doing this ?

If you think Data is like Gold then remember that Gold is almost as worthless as any other metal sitting deep underground. The value comes in the marketplace, after these ugly shaped metals have been processed and shaped into beautifully articulated jewellery.

So no matter how ecstatic DCI get about the availability of data around them, it’s processability and marketability are two major detractors for its value today.

DCI strongly believe this opens up a world of possibilities to expand their business model into new unchartered territories. They are excited as to where this can lead and envision that not only will this be able to have more impact as a business allowing even more businesses and organisations of any kind to benefit from their data, but also the possibility to be one of the first movers and contributors in the so-called multi-billion dollar data economy.

Data capture

DCI capture big digital commerce data from various online sources (web, social, mobile platforms) that help analyze a brand’s digital commerce performance down to SKU level.

Data analysis

DCI clean, analyze and use their proprietary algorithms to estimate online sales & other performance metrics on a daily basis. This process enables them to generate a variety of commercial insights and develop competitive benchmarks across brands.

Data visualization

DCI visualize the data into meaningful commercial insight dashboards that can guide your decision making by providing you an overview of your market dynamics, your brand’s performance and predicting future trends.

Data and Artificial Intelligence

The world’s data is growing exponentially but is massively under-utilised. Data sharing has been deemed too risky for privacy and security reasons. Corporates and governments are beginning to recognise that data can be a strategic asset.

At the same time, AI is poised to affect nearly every industry. AI needs data, specifically high-quality training data sets for the AI models to be accurate and thus useful.

Where are we located and why did we choose this location ?

When it comes to deciding where to start your business, the world is your oyster today. There are multiple ways to set up and operate businesses all around the world and it can all be done through a few clicks online.

Frankly, no need to overthink it when you start small or without any significant investments involved, but of course it is wise to make an informed decision and pick the best place you can at the time. One can start a tech company and particularly an AI / Data business pretty much everywhere, but it does come with extra perks & benefits when you do it in an environment that supports and promotes such industries.

For that we couldn’t be more fortunate than establishing our business in Singapore. Singapore has clearly identified Artifical Intelligence as an area of focus and is building capabilities and infrastructure to support all sorts of initiatives. Visit https://www.aisingapore.org to find out more.

DCI are also grateful to have picked Level3 and the Unilever Foundry as their co-working space to kick things off. Level3 is located on level 3 of the Unilever Regional Headquarters building at Mapletree Business City in Singapore. They host a number of MarTech, Data and AI, as well as E-commerce related startups. They also focus on Food & Agriculture and Sustainable Growth Tech.

Here DCI can tap into the expertise of innovative data businesses like DEX, leverage breakthrough blockchain technologies like the Ocean Protocol and exchange ideas and knowledge with many like-minded Consumer Goods professionals and corporate partners that are part of their ecosystem.