This tech-enabled crystal pendant can keep women safe from assault

Smart safety pendant SAFER.

Sunaina had landed at the Delhi airport in the wee hours of the morning and was in a cab when she noticed the driver taking a detour. That made her uneasy. He said he wanted to fill petrol. But the car was entering unknown territory and he was refusing to stop.

So she did something James Bond would do. She reached for her glass pendant and pressed it twice…

Sunaina is not her real name, but her story is. And unlike what happens to many women travelers in India, nothing untoward happened in this case. The pendant – actually a gadget called SAFER that can send out SOS alerts – might have saved the day.

“It served as an empowering device. The woman could convince the driver that he was being monitored,” says Paras Batra, co-founder of Leaf Wearables, the startup that makes SAFER.

It was launched in 2015 by Paras, along with Avinash Bansal, Manik Mehta, Ayush Banka, Chiraag Kapil – all students of IIT Delhi and Delhi Technological University. By December it had sold 1,200 pieces. Today, the figure stands at 7,000.

The founders of Leaf Wearables.

Agent 007

This swish piece of hand-cut glass crystal looks more like a rock to flaunt than a safety gadget. But it has a little button at the back (I told you, straight out of Agent 007’s stable).

“[When pressed twice] an SOS alert enables women to get in touch with their loved ones instantly,” Paras tells Tech in Asia. “It’s like always having virtual companions.”

The pendant is connected by Bluetooth to a user’s smartphone. A user has to pre-identify the numbers of the ‘guardians’ (the people she wants to alert in an emergency) in her phone through the SAFER app.

An interesting feature is that a guardian doesn’t need to have a smartphone. “In that case, a simple text-based address giving the SAFER user’s location is sent to the number,” says Paras. If a guardian does have a smartphone, they can see the location on a map or even track the movements of the SAFER user in realtime.

The app also lets you find the nearest hospital and police station, so it makes sense to have in unfamiliar places.

Damsels in distress

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