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COMPANY OVERVIEW

WEBSITE

www.equitydatascience.com

FOUNDERS

Sandeep Varma and Greg McCall

LOCATIONS

New York City & Mumbai

EMPLOYEES

31

MILESTONES

• 01/2017 - EDS Founded
• 01/2012 - First Client (Built as an internal platform)
• 12/2018 - Top 10 Portfolio Analytics Vendor
• 02/2021 - Series A strategic investment from Northern Trust
• 06/2021 - Best Technology Firm – Newcomer shortlist by HFM US Services Awards 2021

CLIENTS

Core: Fundamental Hedge Funds & Asset Managers

Growth Areas: Corporates

PRODUCT STATS

SOLUTION

The EDS platform supports active, fundamental managers, their investment decision-making and workflow processes, and everything from idea generation to research management all the way through to portfolio construction, risk management, optimization, and ultimately the creation of orders.

DIFFERENTIATOR

Transforms manual investment processes into scalable and repeatable workflows

CORE FEATURES

Ability to work with any data source - partnered with fundamental data from FactSet and Factor data from MSCI - EDS works with any vendor Known for their ability to ingest/improve internal data (ex. financial models, Price Targets, Internal Ranking Systems) 4 Core Configurable Modules (Idea Generation, Portfolio Construction, RMS, Risk Management)

• Spreadsheet-like functionality
• Screening & Back-Testing
• RMS integration with 3rd party apps
• MSCI Barra Factors (including ESG)
• Integrates with multiple ESG providers
• Factor exposure isolation
• Historical valuation
• Statistical regression
• Trade optimization
• Portfolio simulation
• Configurable attribution

INTERVIEW

Anduril Partners (Anduril) sat down with Greg McCall, one of the co-founders of EDS, to get some insights on his firm:

AP: In a nutshell, what does Equity Data Science or EDS offer?

GM: I’d like to think that EDS is the Moneyball platform for investing. Most people are familiar with Michael Lewis’ book, Moneyball, and how Billy Beane, the general manager of the Oakland Athletics, changed baseball by using analytics to build his team and develop game-by-game rosters. In the same way, EDS gives investment managers a world-class toolbox to build an analytics-supported portfolio and to make real-time analytics-based investment decisions. More formally, EDS is a modern platform for fundamental investing, providing decision-support as well as repeatable and scalable workflows across the investment process—from idea generation to portfolio construction to creating orders.

AP: How did the idea or opportunity for your company about?

GM: Sandeep built one of the first decision-support platforms for Steve Galbraith at Herring Creek, beginning in 2012. I [Greg] had witnessed industries undergo significant productivity/process improvements through the application of technology, like salesforce.com for the sales industry, and was looking for opportunities to do that for the investment firms. When Sandeep and I meet at a technology conference in 2014, it spawned what would become Equity Data Science or EDS 3 years later.

AP: I want to get started with EDS. How long will that take before I can start using it?

GM: We strive to have our clients implemented quicky before any commitment is made (1 -3 months with their internal & external data). As a cloud application, we on-board clients in a day or two…faster if it’s a priority. We have preconfigured data pipelines to most data storage providers, and we have integrated data feeds, such as Factset and MSCI, that can be turned on for users.

AP: Is there a particular feature of the EDS that has received recent attention?

GM: There are few, but I’ll go with our FactorsLab®. Barra Risk Factors have been around for a while, but it is a challenge to integrate them into production as a component of decision-making. Clients and prospects have found a solution in our FactorsLab®. It’s analytics and decisioning solution using MSCI’s risk factors data and can be ‘stood up’ immediately and used as a standalone screening solution or integrated into an investment process workflow, for example.

AP: Your core clients have been primarily hedge funds and Asset Managers. Is there a next frontier of client for EDS?

GM: Yes. I expect that we will start to branch out beyond our core investment vertical in the next few years. We are already seeing interest and have clients on the corporate side. At its core, the EDS Platform is a next generation business intelligence platform that is flexible to customer requirements – making it an ideal solution for many industries who still primarily rely on excel as a mission-critical element of their business.