An app to help Bengaluru's working women in distress

Bengaluru: For women working late night and travelling at odd times, safety is now just a tap away in the form of a medical emergency app. With the changing urban landscapes demanding time for the working professionals, safety has always been an issue for family and guardians.

Going by the name MUrgency BodyGuard, is a free mobile application which connects both the user and police authorities who choose to use it in their control rooms. “As women, many of us have experienced situations where we have felt unsafe. As parents, we worry about our children getting home safely. As working adults, we have to ensure that we have access to reliable travel arrangements before committing to stay late at work. We felt that there had to be a more reliable way of ensuring that women, children and vulnerable individuals can get help from the nearest trusted person,” explains Sweta Mangal, Director and Co-Founder, MUrgency Inc.

The application works on three useful free services which would help women seek help during emergency situations.

The first feature, called ‘Virtual Body Guard’, is designed for individuals who are travelling alone, visiting an unfamiliar location or meeting up with someone new. This feature will share the geographical location with friends and family and offer help if needed. Users can also upload photos of the vehicle and the driver. “The second feature, ‘ShoutOut’ communicates to other MUrgency Users who are within a radius of 500 meters to 50 kilometers. This feature will help women stranded on highways, lost in foreign cities or looking for a lost child by shouting out to nearby MUrgency Users. Women can change the range of reach of their message as per need,” says Sweta. The third feature, the ‘Nearby’ service can locate nearby emergency facilities like police stations.

"We studied several personal safety apps both in India and across the world. We worked closely with the team who had developed a women's safety app but had failed in scaling it. MUrgency Bodyguard is built keeping in view essential requirements to provide personal safety to women and children when they travel," says the director. He adds that they also have an emergency medical response feature which instantly gets a professional, trained and credentialed medical professional -- Doctor, Nurse, EMT or Paramedic -- to you in less than 10 minutes when you raise an alarm of a medical emergency. In future they want to upgrade the application by releasing a free police dashboard that will allow the police to track any alerts from the MUrgency BodyGuard and respond faster in case of an escalation. Each station will be able to select their jurisdiction, demarcate their territory, and connect with the user in case an alert is raised through MUrgency BodyGuard.