Announcing the four Smart Data Discovery Challenge winners and a new £750,000 prize

The four winners of the Smart Data Discovery Challenge have been named at a pitching event taking place this evening, as well as the exciting announcement of a full challenge prize.

Minister for Enterprise, Markets and Small Business, Kevin Hollinrake MP, awarded the four winning teams a share of £20,000 for their ideas on how to use Smart Data to make a difference for consumers, small businesses and society. Congratulations to all 14 finalist teams, who delivered brilliant pitches in front of an expert judging panel.

Congratulations to the four winners:

• Smartlayer.ai
• Rodeo
• Mealia
• Smarter Contracts

We are thrilled that we will be launching a new Smart Data Challenge Prize later this summer. Participants will have the opportunity to prototype their Smart Data ideas in a digital sandbox, with the support of grant funding. The strongest entrants will be eligible for a share of up to £750,000.

More about the winning use case ideas

• Rodeo – Smart earnings data for gig workers – Lightning Riders, the team behind the Rodeo app used by more than 15,000 drivers, proposes a Smart Earnings Data scheme to enable gig workers to access and control their earnings data. Millions of gig workers in the UK are paid by dynamic algorithms on platforms like Uber, Deliveroo, Just Eat and Amazon. As ‘independent contractors’ they need to manage their finances and taxes and make informed decisions about who to work for and which jobs to accept. Smart earnings data would unlock new financial tools for drivers and enable gig workers to exercise their market power, improve their financial security and facilitate greater tax compliance.
• Smarter Contracts – Digital financial health check and monitor – An online financial assistant providing consumers with personalised money-saving comparison offers for a wide variety of cross-sector services. Consumers could consent to always-on monitoring of their current products and services in relation to market changes, to check that they are always on the most appropriate product and terms, alerting them to potential savings when available. The entrants believe it could enable millions of UK consumers to save hundreds of pounds annually.
• Mealia – Personalised grocery optimisation for health, savings and sustainability – Integrating supermarket data to recommend healthier food alternatives, cost savings, budget-friendly shopping strategies, meals based on purchase data, and more sustainable food choices.
• Smartlayer.ai – personalised home finance products powered by a predictive “HomeHealth Score” – designed in collaboration with  Tier-1 UK bank, the HomeHealth score combines Open Banking data and Smart Energy data with the aim of humanising consumer choice in home finance, energy consumption and CO2 emissions reduction. Smartlayer aims to open up personalised, wallet-sensitive, smart home finance options to the many households currently excluded from green finance.

The Smart Data Prize will also be delivered by Challenge Works, the Open Data Institute and the Smart Data Foundry. Challenge Works – part of innovation foundation Nesta – previously designed and ran the influential Open Up Challenges in 2018 and 2020 to incentivise new products using open banking to benefit SMEs and individuals. Winners have gone on to become successful scaling businesses putting the UK at the forefront of global fintech – including Moneybox, Plum, Funding Circle, Funding Options and Swoop.

Stay tuned to find out more about the challenge prize later this year!