Big data is the new roaring business. After all, data affects us all & one has to tackle all that copious amounts of data being generated daily. But what happens when you want more data? Where does one turn to for that? This is where this big data startup Enigma comes into the picture.

Startup Enigma is an example of a web service that permits its users to dig for an intense amount of public data that is otherwise difficult to obtain. For those of you familiar with computational knowledge engine Wolfram Alpha, think of Enigma as a search engine than can seemingly join up scattered yet similar sets of data.

This big data startup, winner of this year’s TechCrunch Disrupt New York 2013, is geared to harness the power of public big data. Enigma was founded by Raphael Guilleminot, Hicham Oudghiri, Marc DA Costa, & Jeremy Bronfman in 2012. This big data startup assists users in discovering “hidden” facts, helping them find data sets, which they can retrieve from anywhere else, & in the process, synthesize data from unique sources.

The strategy of this big data startup is to take public data that is valuable, starting with data that is relevant to economic activity and corporations, & make it “utilizable”. There are 2 challenges here: Accessibility, which comes with knowing what you are searching but is not obtainable in utilizable form, the other being, data discovery. The latter is the ability of searching on a particular topic you have an interest in, & discover data you had no idea you needed.

Enigma’s role is connecting you to the data you require. It claims to have access to 10,000+ public data sources. The big data startup uses a hybrid approach of mining data: the 1st step in getting the data is to scour government domains. Enigma’s government data was obtained by issuing a Freedom of Information Act request to the U.S. General Services Administration for all the top level .gov domains.

If you still haven’t found what you were looking for, you may even contact the guys at this New York, USA based startup & tell them the exact nature of data you want. They promise to help.

There are 3 services available – Individual, Enterprise & API. For the 1st category, you need to submit a request & they in turn will get back to you, offering you a trial period. The other 2 are paid services but the prices are not put out yet.

Image Credit: Enigma

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