Generation Start-up: How one company is mining data to help fight Covid-19

Narrativa, which has an office in Abu Dhabi, plans to raise $5m over the next few weeks

Narrativa chief executive and founder David Llorente is a seasoned entrepreneur with several ventures across Europe. Courtesy Narrativa

When David Llorente left Estonia for his native Spain in 2015 to start his latest venture Narrativa, he was already a seasoned entrepreneur.

A street marketing company in Spain, an online dating website predating Tinder in Italy as well as an e-learning platform were some of his early successes.

While heading up a large gaming company, Mr Llorente was slightly vexed by constant talk related to 'content' and wondered how he could possibly steer a company beyond that into the realms of automation.

After selling his marketing firm and house in Estonia, where he lived for 10 years, he moved back to Spain to work on Narrativa. The company mines vast amounts of data to provide insights in English, Arabic and Spanish languages.

Narrativa now provides content for Saudi Telecom in the Middle East and also works with a number of journalism platforms including the Wall Street Journal as well as the Boston Globe. The company, which has an office Abu Dhabi also works with Saudi Telecom-owned Intigral, real estate portal site Property Finder and other start-ups.

"The news industry was a bit difficult, " says Mr Llorente.

Journalists remained wary about artificial intelligence taking over their jobs. However, news organisations soon began to find value in a service that allowed automation of certain tasks such as earnings reports, while leaving the reporter to pursue analysis and more creative ways of storytelling.

You see clearly the countries with better distancing system and then also the countries that use more of the data to analyse the situation are the ones who do better

Narrativa works with Spain's main news agency EFE, with content provided by the company receiving a joint byline in articles.

"We have almost 30 customers right now and the combined audience for media is over 400 million readers on a monthly basis," says Mr Llorente. "In a year we produce over 50 million stories."

Narrativa's work has become increasingly important in Spain as the company works to track data on the Covid-19 pandemic. Spain is one of the hardest hit in Europe with over 158,000 infections and more than 16,000 deaths as of Saturday, according to Johns Hopkins University which is tracking the pandemic.

Narrativa uses government data from Spain, Italy, France, Germany, the UK, Argentina, Chile, Brazil, Colombia, Switzerland and India helping developers and journalists download and visualise their insights.

While most news organisations follow the widely-used Johns Hopkins University tracker, Mr Llorente observes that it may not be as comprehensive for specific regions.

"Johns Hopkins has state and country-level data for the US but we provide that for many other countries, " he explains.

In specific parts of Italy, even the hardest-hit regions in the north such as Lombardy and Veneto, different patterns have been observed in terms of infections and deaths.

"You see clearly the countries with better distancing system and then also the countries that use more of the data to analyse the situation are the ones who do better," says Mr Llorente.

"You cannot build doctors, you need to do it with intelligence and for that you need data," he says.

Narrativa launched a hackathon on April 10 to help more vulnerable countries in Africa and Latin America model patterns of the outbreak in order to prevent a worsening of the situation similar to the US or Europe.

The hackathon will also track mobility data to help governments ease some of the movement restriction measures currently in place.

"How can we use that data to see how many people to confine and how many to let out to the streets - so this is the second track [of the hackathon]," says Mr Llorente.

While other start-ups have come under the squeeze, with companies deferring payments and laying off staff to cope with the economic standstill wrought by the pandemic, Narrativa is not in a "difficult position", he added.

"We're not suffering a lot and we're fundraising at the moment and we're cash-flow positive and we have enough resources to survive," says Mr Llorente.

Narrativa hopes to raise between $3 million (Dh11m) to $5m over the coming weeks in its Series A round of financing from investors in the US.

You cannot build doctors, you need to do it with intelligence and for that you need data

"We hope to get the term-sheet this week or next week and in a month or two, money in the bank. We're in a very advanced stage of discussions, " says Mr Llorente.

He started the business with $300,000 of his own money, later raising as much as $800,000. Abu Dhabi's media freezone twofour54 is one of the company's investors as well as a former partner of Beco Capital and former managing director of Facebook in the region, according to Mr Llorente. The company also benefited from the Access Sharjah programme launched by the emirate's Sheraa incubator.

Due to its role in tracking the pandemic, Narrativa also is set to receive funding from the European Union Commission as well as the Spanish health ministry. However, the company will steer clear of any state stimulus packages for start-ups.

"We didn't opt for any of these packages because we want to be debt-free," says Mr Llorente.

The European Union's finance ministers pledged more than half a trillion euros in a bailout package to help member states, companies and workers during the pandemic last week.

Narrativa is also looking to co-operate with health authorities in Sharjah and Dubai as the company looks to increase its revenues for the year six fold.

"For 2021 we hope to get to $7-8m in revenues. Last year we made almost $300,000 and this year we're planning $1.3-1.4m, " says Mr Llorente.

Moving forward, Narrativa will shift focus from the media industry and look to do more work in finance and health, he added.

COMPANY PROFILE

Date started: 2015

Founder: David Llorente

Based: Spain, Abu Dhabi

Sector: AI-generated content

Funding: Plans to raise $3-5m in Series A in a few weeks. Current investors include twofour54