Firms, start-ups offer apps, services to make women feel safe

NEW DELHI: Amid increasing concerns over women's safety in the country, specially metros, IT companies, mobile firms and service providers are offering applications and services to ensure they feel safe outside their homes.

The features offered include those by an IT start-up Localcircles.com, through which a women during emergency can generate an alert via mobile phone, whereas, handset maker Nokia offers an app that triggers multiple alerts via sms and email to the family and police, among others.

Similarly, Bharti Airtel, India's largest private mobile phone service operator, runs an emergency alert service using which a customer can send alerts to 10 people from family and friends along with the geographical location with just one call in case of any emergency.

LocalCircles.com, a comprehensive local social network, was created with the idea of connecting and empowering people through forming communities on the web with the idea of helping each other in their day-to-day life.

"The idea behind LocalCircles is to improve the daily life of the citizens in Delhi NCR. For instance, a woman in case of an emergency can send an SMS to the community she is a member in a few clicks from her smartphone alerting them," LocalCircles Managing Director Sachin Taparia told PTI.

Presently, this service is available for smartphones, but, LocalCircles will launch a similar service for feature phones in a couple of months and is also looking at integrating the emergency services like hospitals, fire and police with it.

"Joining the community at present is only by invitation as it takes time to confirm the profile of the person who is joining the community, but, we are in process of opening it for all," Taparia said.

Likewise, with mobile phones becoming an inseparable part of our lives, Finnish handset major Nokia also launched its app, EyeWatch, which triggers multiple alerts through sms and email to one's family, police and other agencies by calling the selected emergency contacts.

The app has 'Free fall activation', which gets activated automatically when the mobile phone drops or one can simply shake the phone to activate it.

Using multiple methods of locating the cell, this app keeps track of mobile's location even in a moving vehicle or in a building or a place where GPS does not work.

Bharti Airtel also launched its Emergency Alert Service, which helps the customer in sending alerts to their closest 10 family and friends along with their geographic location with just one call on 55100 in case of any emergency situation.

The service works even on feature phones and allows customers to send a SAFE alert to inform their loved ones of their safety in case they may be out alone or may have got stuck somewhere.