As India learns to live with COVID, tech startups offer hygiene, sanitation solutions
Regularly disinfecting objects that one uses all the time, such as phones, earphones, watches and other accessories, is not easy. Now an ecommerce vendor named The Messy Corner is marketing a device that uses ultra-violet light for sterilisation.
The ‘UV Care Sterilizer’, which resembles a large pencil box of sorts, is just about big enough to hold a phone of 6.5 inch screen size.
To use it, plug in the USB type C device, open the lid, put in your phone, watch, ring and other small accessories, close it and press the power button. In three minutes, the device beeps to notify you that the sterilisation process is complete.
It is also said to double up as a wireless charger.
UV Care Sterilizer is available for Rs 3,999 on ecommerce site The Messy Corner.
Large-scale cleaning machines are in great demand during the pandemic, particularly in offices, hospitals, malls and places where hundreds of people gather. There are concerns about cough droplets lingering in air for several minutes and enclosed spaces being breeding grounds for the SARS-CoV-2 virus that causes COVID-19. Indian startup Cleantech seeks to address this problem with its Magneto Central Air Cleaner (MCAC).
An ISO certified air cleaning machine, MCAC uses filterless magnetic air purification and ultraviolet technology, and claims to eliminate 90 per cent of 90-percent of SARS-CoV-2 viruses, apart from bacteria and pollutants from the air in enclosed spaces.
Cleantech boasts of a large clientele including Apple, Google, BMW, Uber, Taj Group of hotels, Leela hotels, PGI Chandigarh hospital, Jindal Steel Power, Airbus and Nokia.
Similarly catering to needs that have come up since COVID-19 took over the world, video analytics startup Wobot is using surveillance technology to view CCTV footage and detect, for example, if employees are deviating from established standard operating procedures such as sanitising hands before entering a workplace.
Using machine learning, the technology analyses gigabytes of video to learn repeating patterns and therefore flag anomalies.
Wobot claims IRCTC, Barista and Cultfit as clients.
The company says the technology is being used to “keep an eye on” whether kitchen staff are using hairnets while cooking, regularly washing their hands, using gloves while packaging foodstuff, wearing personal protective equipment or uniforms as prescribed and so on.
The surveillance tech also tells on staff if the floors are unclean, the quality of raw material procured is poor, if there has been pilferage, and even whether they are interacting with guests according to the SOPs.
