Difficulty in getting financing has been plaguing many enterprises, especially small and mid-sized innovative start-up businesses. Recently, a new idea of using data assets as collateral came up to solve the problem. At the world's first data asset evaluation model release in Beijing, China's first data loan was issued. At the release meeting, Guiyang Bank offered one million yuan as a data loan to Guizhou East Century.

Traditional enterprises have fixed assets like workshops, but more enterprises now have a significant number of intangible assets, including patents. Many industry insiders used to think it unlikely that they could get loans based on data asset evaluation. However, a Zhongguancun data asset evaluation center and the global information study and consultation firm Gartner realized the impossible by jointly releasing the world's first data asset evaluation model.

The model relies on the data’s intrinsic value, business value, performance value, cost value, market value and economic value, according to Zhao Guang, a partner at Gartner. It offers comprehensive and standard data asset evaluation through quantity, range and quality.

Qin He, director of the Zhongguancun data center, said that both sides will carry out deeper cooperation in big data standard applications and work with professional Chinese institutes, such as the China National Institute of Standardization, to develop the evaluation system standards and processes.

Companies can register a rights confirmation letter and get a data assets evaluation report at the Zhongguancun data asset center. They can become a shareholder of innovation enterprises by transfer of data use rights. They can get from one to 30 percent of the shares of a startup, based on the size of the company, the amount of data and its utility period.