Omidyar Network Investment Completes digi.me's Series A at £5.3M ($7M)

LONDON, September 27, 2016 /PRNewswire/ --

Digi.me, the pioneering start-up transforming how consumers and businesses unlock the value of personal data, has closed its Series A round at £5.3m ($7m) with a $1m investment from Omidyar Network, the impact investment firm created by eBay founder Pierre Omidyar.

Digi.me is developing a unique Permissioned Access platform built on its patent-pending technology that will allow users to bring together data from across their lives, including health, financials and more, and give them the option to share it with businesses for personalised services, convenience or reward.

With digi.me, consumers get back control of how and where their personal data is used, while businesses get the wholly correct and permissioned data they lack today for innovation and service improvements - creating a transparent relationship and delivering a true win-win situation.

Digi.me founder and chairman Julian Ranger said: "Omidyar Network's investment in digi.me is a recognition that our vision of re-defining the overall relationship that both users and businesses have with personal data is well and truly on its way.

"Whilst new regulations such as GDPR will force some changes, we are ahead of the curve and developing the platform that will enable a transparent and trustworthy relationship between consumers and businesses.  

"Being part of the Omidyar Network "family" is also giving us access to amazing businesses and non-for-profit organisations for which the transparent use of personal data will enable deeper customer relationships." 

Omidyar Network Investment Partner CV Madhukar said: "We at Omidyar Network believe that individual empowerment in today's economy requires one to have the ability to control the personal data that shapes one's digital identity.  

"Digi.me's solution is particularly compelling in that it ensures privacy through its "don't see, don't touch, don't hold" approach to user data:  Storage, access, and use of personal data rests with the owner.   

"Digi.me's team, innovative solutions, and business model position the company well to set the bar in the 'me-to-business' market." 

Digi.me's current version of the app, which gathers pictures and posts from the major social media networks, is distributed in over 140 countries and in 11 languages. It proved that aggregating personal data streams to bring them to life achieves greater value and personal insight that is impossible to get when that data is scattered across the web.

With the digi.me app, users have their online life at their fingertips with tools including universal search across all platforms, daily flashbacks, the ability to create custom collections of content, data export and more. The ability to add health and financial data will come later this year, with other streams including shopping to follow shortly after.

Digi.me's unique approach and technology also guarantees that all user data remains wholly private to the individual. Digi.me doesn't see, touch nor hold any of the personal data downloaded by the user. The app, which is available for PC, Mac, iOS and Android, simply aggregates, normalises and encrypts the data allowing it to be searched, presented and shared in ways that were impossible until now.

With the Series A funding led by Swiss Re complete, digi.me is firmly focused on future innovation and is working on projects with world-leading businesses in the health, finance, FMCG and telco sectors. It is also on course to set up a 'living lab' that will be announced later this year.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Editor's Notes: 

Digi.me's full press pack, which includes high-resolution images, logos and screenshots for download, can be found at digi.me/press. Digi.me is available on desktop for PC and Mac https://digi.me/download-trial and for mobile on iOS and Android http://try.digi.me/

More information on the digi.me senior team and advisory board can be found at http://get.digi.me/about/

ABOUT OMIDYAR NETWORK 

Omidyar Network is a philanthropic investment firm dedicated to harnessing the power of markets to create opportunity for people to improve their lives. Established in 2004 by eBay founder Pierre Omidyar and his wife Pam, the organization invests in and helps scale innovative organizations to catalyze economic and social change. Omidyar Network has committed more than $1 billion to for-profit companies and nonprofit organizations that foster economic advancement and encourage individual participation across multiple initiatives, including Consumer Internet & Mobile, Education, Financial Inclusion, Governance & Citizen Engagement, and Property Rights.

To learn more, visit http://www.omidyar.com, and follow on Twitter @omidyarnetwork

#PositiveReturns