A San Francisco-based startup has sent out data collectors armed with just an Android phone, to harvest real-time economic data as and where it happens. From the price of onions in Indian cities to delayed infrastructure projects in rural China,Premise data is, for the first time, giving governments, investors and NGOs an accurate glimpse of what is happening on the ground.
In the Butantã branch of Extra, the Brazilian supermarket chain, in the western suburbs of São Paulo, Sandra Morais, 37, is taking photos of bags of rice.
She's not some retail Instagrammer or an obsessive foodie, but one of 25,000 data collectors that a San Francisco-based startup called premise.
The aim is to ascertain which products are available , at what price and quantities available and location available to facilitate proper planning .
Premise was founded in 2012 by an American former investment analyst, David Soloff, now 46, who realized that a large amount of developing-world economic data, on which big institutions were basing their risk and funding decisions, was significantly out of date by the time it reached their desks.
