Patel’s DataChat wins Governor’s Business Plan Contest information technology award

Jignesh PatelProf. Jignesh Patel’s spinoff DataChat won the information technology award at the 15th annual Governor’s Business Plan Contest this week.

  • The contest was organized by the Wisconsin Technology Council and sponsored by a wide range of public interest groups, technology businesses and providers of services to entrepreneurs. The contest began by winnowing 196 entries from 56 Wisconsin communities to 12 finalists, who gave seven-minute pitches on Tuesday at the Wisconsin Entrepreneurs’ Conference on the UW–Madison campus.
  • DataChat has created an intelligent interface that allows data-heavy businesses and organizations to ask plain-English questions, such as, “What is the trend in productivity of my sales force over the last year?” or “Which properties have seen the greatest appreciation in the last 18 months, and why?” Said Patel, who has started and sold several other computer science companies, “Data is the new oxygen, and businesses can’t afford to throw out data. But most companies extract a small fraction of potential value from their data.”

(David Tenenbaum, University Communications)

Read more about the other winners and the contest here.