Arachnys pulls big data from emerging markets [Springboard]

Mike Butcher

Mike Butcher is the European Editor for TechCrunch. A former grunge rock drummer, he became a long time journalist, and has since written for UK national newspapers and magazines including The Financial Times, The Guardian, The Times, The Daily Telegraph and The New Statesman. Mike is also a co-founder and shareholder of TechHub, a co-working space/service/community with several locations... → Learn More

Friday, July 29th, 2011

What do you get if you cross an ex-Control Risks analyst with a technical co-founder? Remember, Control Risks is about entering and dealing with emerging new markets, where anything can happen. So Arachnys is about digging deep into the data about business information from emerging markets like India, China, and Russia. Think Google for emerging markets.

For instance: India has 27 states, and separate courts in each state. A search on a litigation action is almost impossible.

The information about these areas is fragmented, badly organised, and often unsearchable. Most existing providers don’t have real-time data. Thus, their first product will be to help customers find data form deep web that they would not get from Google or specialist data providers. It’s actually not unlike Quid or PalantirTech.com

In the short term they are building a compliance product – this is not just raw data but insight. Useful for people who do things like background checks on prospective employees, or and checking court cases against individuals. A prototype is on trial with 10 customers and they hope to convert them in the next couple of weeks. The business model is licensing, similar to Quid.