Name

Development Data Lab

Legal name

Development Data Lab

Website

https://devdatalab.org

Company type

Private

Operating status

Operating

Headcount range

1–10 employees

Ownership category

akta.pro rank

Product category

Open Socioeconomic Data Platforms

NAICS

Scientific Research and Development Services (5417)

SIC

Services-Computer Processing & Data Preparation (7374)

akta.pro primary industry

Scientific Data Management & Data Platforms (SDMS/Data Lakehouse for R&D) (HLAGAJAC)

akta.pro secondary industries

Data Linkage, Registries & Longitudinal Cohort Surveillance (HLAJANAM), Public Health GIS, Geospatial & Environmental Exposure Analytics (HLAJAJAJ)

Keywords

• Open data platforms
• Geospatial socioeconomic data
• Development economics research
• India socioeconomic datasets
• Policy research infrastructure

Headquarters

HQ city

Washington

HQ country

United States

HQ region

North America

Markets served

GTM type

B2B

Offering type

Software

Cost components

Personnel, Technology or R&D, Infrastructure, Operations

Revenue model

1. Grant Funding: DDL operates as a research organization funded primarily through grants from foundations and government agencies including Gates Foundation, FCDO, World Bank, and other development-focused institutions. No commercial revenue generation model is indicated.
2. Open Data Distribution: All data is provided free of charge under Creative Commons BY-NC-SA 4.0 International License for non-commercial use. Commercial use inquiries are handled separately through direct contact with the team for custom data generation requests.

Pricing tiers

Go-to-market motion2 records

Distribution channels3 records

Marketing channels5 records

Core offering

Development Data Lab builds and maintains open-access geospatial and socioeconomic data platforms — primarily SHRUG — that link dozens of Indian census, administrative, judicial, health, and infrastructure datasets across 500,000+ villages and 8,000 towns over 25 years using common geographic identifiers. It also provides specialized data platforms (DDL COVID India, Judicial Data Portal), visualization tools (SHRUG Atlas), and AI-driven research tools (Norms GPT, Gender Classifier) for researchers and policy-makers, all released under open licenses.

Product overview

Development Data Lab operates as an open data research organization that builds and maintains multiple interconnected data platforms and tools. The core product is SHRUG (Socioeconomic High-resolution Rural-Urban Geographic Platform) — a comprehensive geographic data infrastructure linking dozens of datasets across India's villages and towns since 1990. Supporting platforms include the DDL COVID India data portal (epidemiological and health data), the Judicial Data Portal (81 million court cases with gender classification tools), and the SHRUG Atlas (interactive visualization layer). The Norms GPT project represents their application of LLM technology to unlock historical ethnographic data. The Gender Classifier provides standalone gender classification for Indian names. All data is released under open licenses (ODbL for SHRUG, Open Database License for judicial data).

Differentiator

Problem solved

Functional benefit

Brands

• SHRUG: Socioeconomic High-resolution Rural-Urban Geographic Platform for India - an open access repository comprising datasets covering India's villages and towns over 25 years, linked together with common geographic identifiers.
• SHRUG Atlas
• Gender Classifier
• DDL COVID India
• Judicial Data Portal

Products and services

• SHRUG (Socioeconomic High-resolution Rural-Urban Geographic Platform) Open-access geographic data platform linking dozens of Indian datasets (Population Census 1991-2011, Economic Census 1990-2013, SECC, night lights, forest cover, PM2.5 pollution, elevation, Facebook wealth, elections, RBI banking data, PMGSY rural roads, Mission Antyodaya) across India's 500,000+ villages and 8,000 towns over 25 years using common geographic identifiers (shrids). Used by academic researchers and policy-makers for development economics research.
• DDL COVID India Open-source COVID-19 data platform providing subdistrict-level hospital and clinic beds, population demographics, infection and death data, agricultural market data, and migration data for India to parameterize epidemiological models and assess policy tradeoffs.
• Judicial Data Portal Public dataset of 81 million Indian court cases from 2010-2018 with associated tools for analyzing judicial decision-making, including the Gender Classifier trained on 13.7 million Delhi voter roll names using bidirectional LSTM neural networks.
• SHRUG Atlas Interactive web-based visualization portal for SHRUG data at district and village/town levels, enabling researchers and policy-makers to explore and download socioeconomic variables mapped geographically across India across 600,000+ geographic units.
• Norms GPT Research project using LLMs to classify historical ethnographic texts (tens of thousands of PDF pages from 1880s-1930s) on India's ~5000 subcaste groups, building a 150-year panel of cultural change covering ~30 classes of social and gender norms (marriage, gender, inheritance, occupation).
• Gender Classifier Web tool that classifies gender from Indian names using a bidirectional LSTM neural network trained on 13.7 million Delhi voter rolls, returning probability scores; users can upload CSV files for batch classification or download the trained neural network code to train on custom datasets.

Quantifiable outcome

• 95% accuracy in GPT-based norms classification compared to human classifiers
• +2 more outcomes

Named customers4 records

Segments3 records

Ideal customer profiles2 records

Technology focussed Yes

API detail

Has API

No

API docs

API detail

Core technology

AI maturity

App detail

AI capability6 records

Feature6 records

Partnerships

One partnership is on record.

• IDinsightsecondaryStrategic or Co-development PartnerJoint survey work on COVID-19 Related Shocks Survey in Rural India, combining DDL's data infrastructure with IDinsight's survey expertise.

Scale indicators12 records

Recent moves6 records

Expansion highlights6 records

Emerging players

• Premise Data: Data company that crowdsources ground-truth data from contributors in emerging markets using a mobile app. Comparable as a developer of alternative/non-traditional datasets for development economics, consumer, and public-sector use cases in countries where official data is limited.
• Data.org: Platform founded by the Rockefeller Foundation and Mastercard Center for Inclusive Growth that funds and convenes organizations using data for social impact. Operates in the same 'data for development' space as DDL, including capacity-building grants and challenge funds for data organizations in emerging markets.
• Flowminder: Nonprofit that uses mobile operator, satellite, and survey data to produce development and humanitarian insights in low- and middle-income countries. Comparable to DDL's work combining satellite imagery with administrative data for policy-relevant insights in developing countries.

Direct peers

• AidData: Research lab at William & Mary that produces open data on development finance, geospatial data on infrastructure projects in developing countries, and policy-relevant datasets. Directly comparable to DDL as an open data platform serving researchers and policymakers in development economics.
• J-PAL (Abdul Latif Jameel Poverty Action Lab): Academic research organization at MIT that produces evidence on poverty reduction in developing countries, including India. Both J-PAL and DDL are research organizations funded by similar funders (Gates, DFID/FCDO, World Bank) and target the same audience of policymakers, governments, and academics working on global development.
• Center for Effective Global Action (CEGA): UC Berkeley-based research center that funds and conducts development economics research globally, with strong India focus. CEGA is listed as an active DDL partner and shares the academic research network, funder profile, and mission of producing actionable evidence for poverty reduction.
• Innovations for Poverty Action (IPA): Research and policy nonprofit that conducts rigorous impact evaluations and partners with governments to bring evidence into poverty reduction policy. IPA shares DDL's development economics mission, similar institutional funders, and primary user base of researchers and policymakers.

Broad incumbents

• DHS Program (Demographic and Health Surveys): USAID-funded program that has produced the largest set of nationally representative household surveys in developing countries for 40+ years. Comparable to DDL's COVID India platform and health data work in providing standardized, widely-cited health and demographic data for researchers studying developing countries.
• World Bank Open Data: World Bank's flagship open data portal providing socioeconomic indicators across all countries. Direct funder of DDL and competing/overlapping with SHRUG at the macro level for development economics research and policy use cases.
• Google Data Commons: Google-operated open knowledge graph that aggregates public datasets and provides unified access via APIs and visualizations. Comparable as an open data infrastructure that combines multiple sources under a common framework; represents a scaled, well-funded alternative model for linked public data.

Market position

Strengths4 records

Weaknesses5 records

Competitive moat5 records

Key risks6 records

Key highlights6 records

Customer concentration

• GitHubgithub.com/devdatalab
• Xx.com/devdatalab
• LinkedInlinkedin.com/company/devdatalab

Revenue estimate

Valuation estimate

Number of profiles

Profiles9 records

Funding overview

Funding rounds

Investors

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M&A

Investments

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Frequently asked questions about Development Data Lab