When crime against women is on the rise and the police seem helpless to combat it, a telecommunications professional from Bengaluru has designed an emergency device that may be able to offer them the protection they are looking for.
Named after the Greaek god of safety, ITUS, the wearable product, weighs only 15gram, and can trigger an SOS even if the woman is 20 feet away from his or her phone. Even better, it can be worn discreetly around the neck and requires only a prolonged touch to activate. The brainchild of Krishnendu Das Gupta, founder and CEO of SafeInCity, a safety solution provider, the device can help women employees of a company , who may be in distress reach out to a Corporate Security Team in an emergency. All they need to do is press the button for four seconds to trigger the SOS call and send the location to the receiver. “It provides the location even with the GPS turned off. And as most employees carry an ID Card to work, we figured it was the best place to integrate ITUS,” Mr Gupta explains.
The designing was not a simple process and his team spoke to many security providers at various MNCs to do the research. "We met with several health and safety experts from the safety and security domain and found that despite having a mobile phone, people are not able to raise an alarm in an emergency as the panic made it difficult for them to reach out for it, unlock it and make a call. Additionally, giving someone a precise location is virtually impossible in such circumstances," he points out, adding, "We soon realised that there was an urgent need for something very simple which does not require any thought process. As we started to design the product, we wanted to make it extremely simple to use and yet very reliable. We also wanted to make sure it could be carried in multiple ways, thereby making it difficult for the perpetrator to guess the location of the wearable trigger."
While ITUS allows friends and family to receive an SMS and a link to the person’s location, the company security can view the SOS real-time on a dashboard, which pinpoints the location along with all necessary details like the name, blood group, emergency contact numbers and so on of the employee concerned, thereby saving crucial time in case of an emergency.
Mr Gupta has made sure to file for a provisional patent to protect the IP as he believes there is no such product anywhere else in the world today.
How does ITUS work
While friends and family receive an SMS with the link to the employee location, the company security can view the SOS real-time on a Dashboard which pinpoints the location of the employee along with all necessary details like Name, Blood Group, Emergency Contact numbers etc thereby saving crucial time in case of an emergency.
