Science of being pretty safe

H e may be young but has already gained invaluable knowledge and skills from his successes and failures — experiences that recently made him bag the ‘Most Promising Young Entrepreneur’ title at a business competition in Singapore. Meet Chiraag Kapil, a 22-year-old Delhi Technological University (DTU) student, who led a team of five young entrepreneurs in the 8th Lee Kuan Yew Global Business Plan Competition and won an award prize of $5,000 along with the title.

Appalled by the brutal gangrape-murder of a 23-year-old paramedical student in the capital in 2012, Chiraag along with his teammates from IIT Delhi and DTU devised a wearable security device for women called SAFER. Chiraag’s team titled Leaf also won the second prize of $12,000 for this revolutionary smart pendant, which together with an app, serves to enhance the safety of women. “Despite the phenomenal strides in technology and development, women in India still felt unsafe while walking down the streets. That was totally unacceptable. We juggled with a lot of ideas till we finalised on one which made a lot of sense in contemporary world. And we created SAFER — smart jewellery that keeps women safe and connected,” he said.

Explaining the mechanism behind the pendant, Chiraag said, “If a woman feels threatened, all she has to do is press her Safer pendant twice. This will send out an alert to pre-selected people called Guardians, who will then be able to track her movement in real-time on maps. The pendant works with the   Safer app on the wearer’s mobile phone. It taps nearby cell towers and Wi-Fi routers in addition to the Global Positioning System (GPS) to track and locate users.” Asked how he plans to use the prize money, Chiraag says, “Just like all the previous winnings, I have decided to put the money back into the growth of my company — driving operations, hiring people and making it more successful and established. Money is the blood of the company, so we plan to keep the circulation going.”

Chiraag is also one of the co-founders of Leaf, a wearable technology and Internet of Things company, one of its kind in India which is focused on solving the problem of consumer safety. “Leaf was the brain child of a bunch of five young and talented youngsters — Avinash Bansal, Manik Mehta, Ayush Banka, Paras Batra and myself. We were all 20 and studying in premium colleges of India such as IIT Delhi and Delhi Technological University and had gone abroad for our internship. After gaining substantial experience and knowledge about how much the country was lacking in innovation and was at a nascent stage as compared to the outside standards, we decided to come together and tackle this major problem of women’s safety. Triggers like increasing incidents against women prompted us to continue on our journey with even more focus and speed,” he shared.

Being named the ‘most Promising Young Entrepreneur’ at 22 is a laudable achievement. “The secret sauce to me becoming the most promising young entrepreneur is nothing but having the most promising team of young and dedicated fellow co-founders. Just like a single general is nothing without his army focused on winning the battles, my success is nothing without my team of smart, fast, young and fearless Leaflets. It’s the combination of diversity in thoughts, beliefs and a strong team bonding that makes us one of the most promising young companies,” says Chiraag.

Even as a child Chiraag was an achiever and loved exploring the unexplored. “In 9th grade, I visited Nasa as a part of research scholarship. I was the school topper in 10th grade and then dropped out of school to pursue my love for science by home schooling myself. I later cracked all the competitive exams by the end of 12th grade and became a  KVPY (Kishore Vaigyanik Protsahan Yojana) scholar. I even had an offer from Indian Institute of Sciences to pursue astrophysics in Bengaluru,” he added.

Chiraag feels he is “an artist at heart and a geek in his mind.” He shares, “I have mastered dance forms including modern contemporary, funk and ballet. In the past, I have also managed more than 750 people by becoming the South Delhi division head in the Danceworx Academy of Performing Arts set up by Ashley Lobo. Apart from this, I worked on unmanned and manned aircraft, quadcopters and voice-controlled wheel chairs.”

Among his role models, Chiraag lists, “Business magnate and entrepreneur Elon Musk is my model. He is changing the world with his innovative companies like Tesla (the best electric car company in the world), Space X (space exploration company which is taking mankind on Mars) and Solar City (the company making fossil fuels obsolete with its solar electricity solutions). He is the guy behind PayPal (the company that made bank payments obsolete in 2001 by introducing money transfer via email and online). I relate immensely to him and wish to start my own solar as well as space habitation company by 2020 simultaneously solving mankind’s grandest challenges.”

In future, Chiraag plans to make a million lives Safer till 2017 not only in India but worldwide. He adds, “I wish to make Leaf a ‘decacorn’ (a startup valued at $10 billion or more) company by 2019. To quote — ‘The future is brighter than we all can imagine, and this is just the beginning’.”