SocialCops Awarded as Technology Pioneer by World Economic Forum

SocialCops, the New Delhi–based data intelligence company, was selected among hundreds of candidates as one of the World Economic Forum’s Technology Pioneers. With this selection, SocialCops joins an elite community of companies from around the world that are poised to have a significant impact on business and society. Past winners include Airbnb, Google, Kickstarter, Mozilla, Palantir Technologies, Spotify, Twitter and Wikimedia.

SocialCops was founded in 2013 by Prukalpa Sankar and Varun Banka to enable leaders to use data intelligence to confront critical global challenges. Since then, their technology platform has been used in scenarios as diverse as driving rapid village development, tracking national welfare schemes, and optimizing marketing campaign locations. Their work spans different sectors with partners such as the United Nations, Government of India and Unilever. In 2017 alone, their data intelligence platform processed 11 billion data points and touched the lives of 1 of 25 people in India through their projects and partners. 

The World Economic Forum’s Technology Pioneers community are early-stage companies from around the world that are involved in the design, development and deployment of new technologies and innovations. “We welcome SocialCops in this diverse group of technology pioneers,” says Fulvia Montresor, Head of Technology Pioneers at the World Economic Forum. “SocialCops and its fellow pioneers are front and centre in shaping the ongoing Fourth Industrial Revolution and we believe they will be transforming society and industry in a positive way in the years to come.”

Following its selection as Technology Pioneer, Prukalpa Sankar, co-founder of SocialCops, will be participating in the World Economic Forum Annual Meeting of the New Champions. This meeting, also dubbed “Summer Davos”, will be held in Tianjin, China, from September 18-20. Many Pioneers will also attend the Annual Meeting in Davos, in January 2019, and continue to contribute to Forum initiatives in the course of the next two years. 

“We are honoured to be acknowledged as a Pioneer by the World Economic Forum and join a cohort of global game changers like Palantir & Airbnb”, said SocialCops Co-Founder, Prukalpa Sankar. “When we founded SocialCops, we wanted to democratize data and make it possible for millions of organizations in the world to derive the kind of value from data that only financial institutions and Silicon Valley giants are capable of deriving today. Organizations at different stages of their data journey can use our platform to drive decisions both big and small. We want to use this award as an opportunity to keep engaging with global stakeholders in government and society, as well as in business, to help adopt data-driven systems and increase their impact.” 

The Technology Pioneers were selected by a selection committee of more than 60 academics, entrepreneurs, venture capitalists and corporate executives. The committee based its decisions on criteria including innovation, potential impact and leadership. 

This year’s cohort is the most diverse ever, both geographically and in terms of gender. 25% are female-led, and a majority (54%) come from regions outside the United States and Silicon Valley, with each continent represented, barring Antarctica. There is also a wide variety in the technologies the pioneers focus on — the focus technologies include artificial intelligence, big data and internet of things (IoT), biotechnology, blockchain, autonomous vehicles, cyber security, vertical farming and other agricultural advances, decentralised microgrids and robotics. The full list of Technology Pioneers can be found here.