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By Srikanth RP , InformationWeek, January 30, 2012
... Can the crowdsourcing model be applied to analytics? An Indian startup,
CrowdANALYTIX
thinks it can, and has come out with a unique model to harness the power of crowdsourcing.
"... [We] evolved the crowdsourcing model further into what we call the 'Managed Crowdsourcing' model - where we orchestrate the process of understanding and breaking down the problem into well-defined challenges that the crowd can then attack. These challenges are posed to the crowd as contests," explains Kishore Rajgopal, CEO and Co-Founder, CrowdANALYTIX, who established the company with Divyabh Mishra, Founder and President.
Unlike other crowdsourcing processes, CrowdANALYTIX has a well defined template. As a first step, the firm understands the requirements of a client and collects the data necessary for the modeling challenge. This is done by a lead analyst, who is also responsible for managing the contest and validating the responses. The firm then creates a contest with details on what's expected from the modeling challenge including the method for validating the submitted models. Participants are then invited to contribute in the contest. Each participant is allowed to submit multiple responses.
For example, in a contest, that the firm executed for 'Predicting the quality of red and white wines,' CrowdANALYTIX received over 200 model submissions from over 150 participants located in 15 countries around the world. Models were evaluated almost in real-time and the top ten models were maintained throughout the contest on a leader board. This leader board was updated on a daily basis. The model that was finally accepted as the winning one was 400 percent more optimized than the client's expectations.
... Capitalizing on first mover advantage
CrowdANALYTIX is in a rare space - there is perhaps just one global company - Kaggle - that has a similar business model to them. However, Rajgopal is quick to point out the key difference. Says he,
"We have a first-mover advantage. Kaggle is a company that also does something similar but there's a key difference between them and us. For Kaggle, crowdsourcing analytics is a business model. It is their primary pitch. For CrowdAanalytix, crowdsourcing of analytics is a delivery model."
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