Bas Godska, a former marketing executive of lastminute.com and investor in over a dozen companies with an overall value of €1bn, will help Omdena grow to the next level with his impact investment and his 20-year expertise in growth hacking.
Palo Alto, May 5th, 2020 – The Palo Alto-based startup Omdena runs collaborative AI projects in which global teams of 40 or more data scientists and experts build AI solutions to address significant real-world problems. To date, more than 950 people from 80 countries have participated in Omdena’s challenges. Founded by AI mentor and entrepreneur Rudradeb Mitra in 2019, Omdena is planning to enter a path of steady growth with Godska’s help.
“’We look forward to having Bas join our non-executive board and help us grow Omdena to the next level. Since we started 12 months ago, we ran 18 challenges involving more than a thousand collaborators. In the next 12 months, we look forward to executing 30 projects with more than 1500 collaborators,” said Rudradeb Mitra, the founder of Omdena.
Godska: “I’m excited to contribute to Omdena’s success. The power and speed of Rudradeb’s fast-growing global group of over 950 hands-on AI-experts add rocket fuel to the paradigm shift we all see taking place in society. Governments, NGOs, and businesses struggle nowadays to make much-needed fast decisions, as reliable large data sets need teams and time to be collected, analyzed, and processed. Omdena has the unique resource of an immediately deployable big AI-team available to “crack the code”. I believe Omdena is as close as you can get currently to a sustainable, future-proof A.I. initiative. Its lean versatility and ultra-fast turnaround through precise Challenges will make this model attractive for the high-speed transitions imminent. I want to add value where it matters, A.I. for Good helps to deliver a sustainable future.”
Earlier in April, Omdena and its COVID-19 project which studies the impact of lockdowns on the world’s poorest populations was recognized by Nasdaq and Norrsken Foundation: the company’s effort to make a contribution to solving the global crisis through a collaborative AI project was applauded in the form of a video screen on the Nasdaq building at Times Square in New York City.
Omdena Times Square
Omdena, which is a partner of the United Nations’ AI for Global Good Summit 2020, comes with a track record of successfully completed AI projects. Those efforts include using machine learning to identify the safest routes in Istanbul for earthquake victims to reunite with their loved ones. It has also delivered AI solutions which helped detect the outbreak of fires in the Brazilian rainforest with 95 percent accuracy.
Omdena is a partner of several United Nations organizations, including the UN Refugee Agency and the UN World Food Programme, as well as an official Innovation Partner of the United Nations AI for Global Good Summit 2020.
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For media inquiries contact: Laura Clark Murray, Omdena, [email protected]
About Omdena: Founded in May 2019, Omdena is an innovation platform for building AI solutions to real-world problems through global collaboration. The company’s partners include the UN World Food Programme and the UN Refugee Agency. Omdena is an Innovation Partner of the United Nations AI for Good Global Summit 2020. Learn more at Omdena.com.
Learn more about Omdena’s Coronavirus Policy AI Challenge at https://omdena.com/challenges/ai-pandemics
About Rudradeb Mitra: The India-born Rudradeb Mitra is a graduate from the University of Cambridge, UK and an international AI expert. He has built six startups in four countries. His primary interest is to build products with social value. He is a mentor and AI advisor at several institutions including Google Launchpad, ImpactHub, MIT Enterprise, Founders Institute and a senior AI advisor of EFMA Banking Group. Mitra founded Omdena in 2019 to address real-world problems through global collaboration.
About Bas Godska: Bas Godska is General Partner at early-stage tech fund Acrobator Ventures: the world’s first growth hack VC and only Western investor with over a decade of local presence in the CIS, CEE and Benelux regions. Rated by TechCrunch and Crunchbase as “the most prolific Western investor in Eastern Europe”, Godska accelerated growth for many global companies like Orbitz.com, Adobe, and his portfolio firms like Harver (HR tech/AI) and Miro (productivity platform) which recently secured a $50 million investment.
