NUVO has declared its strategic vision of redefining the way people access, own, and share their personal data. Founded in 2023 by Smriti Chaudhary and Saurav Raaj, the startup is using innovative technology to overcome the key gaps in the national digital ecosystem, specifically addressing the enhancement of data access and individual control to strengthen financial and healthcare inclusion. The declaration, issued in Bangalore, places NUVO at the centre of the trend to establish the ownership as a natural right of all citizens, so that technological advancement can be reflected in equal opportunities for all layers of society. The project aims to give the marginalised a sense of empowerment by putting in their possession what is of greatest value to them, which is their personal information.
Data rights challenge and aim
The establishment of NUVO directly challenges a systemic and deep-seated issue that currently keeps millions of people out of the digital economy. The main problem is the ineffective access and control of data that disproportionately affects vulnerable groups. The target of the company underlines the situation of women in rural areas, where more than half of them do not own a mobile phone.
This basic inaccessibility, combined with a lack of awareness about their natural data rights, creates the exclusion of billions of people from essential basic digital services, such as banking and healthcare services. This two-fold issue of exclusion and ignorance is a significant obstacle to real national digital integration.
The prevailing situation poses a lot of operational friction to the organisations that seek to cater to these populations. Companies and organisations are left struggling with poor and sometimes inefficiently managed consent management systems. This is a systemic vulnerability in data control and consent processes that pose compliance challenges for organisations and make data transmission secure and dependable challenging.
NUVO was developed based on this exact requirement, aiming to produce a unified, technology-enabled solution to assure privacy to the individual and make compliance and data assurance easier for institutions. The startup seeks to bring a new era of trust and digital empowerment in India by addressing both the supply and demand sides of the data exchange.
Strategic growth and core operational mechanism
In order to successfully close this digital divide and resolve the compliance friction, NUVO has carefully crafted its flagship product: a Personalised Data Wallet. This service is essentially a privacy-first platform, which is enhanced by two modern and strong technologies: blockchain and Zero Knowledge Proof Computation.
Blockchain technology also guarantees the immutability of each data interaction, its transparency, and distribution, which is highly effective in terms of security and trust. Zero Knowledge Proof Computation is built in, also further improving the privacy scheme in that the user can validate information with the institutions without being required to provide the underlying actual data, which guarantees complete safety, and the exposure of sensitive information is a bare minimum.
A Universal Consent Layer facilitates the core operating mechanism of the wallet. This layer enables users to control their digital identities and save personal information that is checked and verified. It enables them to disseminate this confirmed information to different institutions only via a granular, direct, and universal consenting process. To the individual, this implies that he/she have complete authority to control his/her personal information and determine how it should be used.
To organisations, the Wallet defines a lean, trusted and fully consented data exchange structure. This is the two-fold advantage of the NUVO approach, which offers secure and compliant access to data that will not only benefit people but also institutions and establish a new and higher standard of data management in the nation.
The involvement in the prestigious Kotak BizLabs Accelerator Programme also gave NUVO considerable strategic development and direction. This partnership was essential to this young startup, as it offered them more than financial help. The program provided NUVO with the strategic mentorship that is priceless, profound business knowledge, and an extensive, powerful network of contacts and industry specialists. The accelerator offered the required framework and direction to enable NUVO to develop its core technology roadmap and align its operational model with great strength to guarantee scalability and practical impact.
Conclusion
Having the innovative, privacy-focused, and blockchain-based data wallet app NUVO is not launching the new app, but rather already establishing new standards in the area of inclusive tech. The startup is fulfilling its mission of transforming true ownership of data into a recognised right by addressing the long-standing problem of data access, control, and digital exclusion, particularly focusing on the empowerment of vulnerable groups such as rural women. It is based on this trust and control that NUVO is successfully pushing serious inclusion in the vast and fast-growing Indian digital economy, and as a result, creating a more equitable, participatory, and transparent digital future for all citizens of the country.
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