05/09/2014
Times of India has listed “GURUSPARSH” as an effective student safety software solution, along with the three software companies in India.
Safety of school kids becomes big business for tech startups
With incidents of violence against children on the rise — including the recent Bangalore school r**e case — worried parents looking to keep their young ones safe are increasingly counting on solutions offered by startups.
While some, such as Ospox and NorthStar, track school bus movements and sends reports to parents throughout the route, others like Smart Campus and Gurusparsh inform them about attendance and whereabouts within the campus.
"We started operations last academic year after three years of research," said Bobbie H Kalra, 42-year-old CEO of NorthStar, a startup which offers school bus tracking facilities to parents including black box services, sensors and driving data that are transmitted to their server.
He said in India there are more than 45,000 school buses that ferry about 15 million children every day.
NorthStar has also come out with an Android app that helps parents check the location of the bus. In case of stoppage beyond six minutes, route deviation and over speeding an instant alert is sent to the school administration.
The company, which has 150 schools and close to 100,000 parents using its services, raised investment of Rs 15 crore. "After the recent incidents relating to child safety in Bangalore, we are seeing a 40% increase in demand." Similarly, Bangalore-based Ospox, offers GPS tracking, CCTV cameras and real time data recording, has also seen a 50% increase in demand in recent months.
"We are working with Mumbai and Bangalore transport authorities and recommending that they implement a centralised single platform application where the government can monitor and identify rogue drivers," said Kiran Kaushik, founder of the Traxoid Automations, the parent company for Oxpox.
Sanjay Kumar, joint commissioner of police of Pune, said such tech "We are working with Mumbai and Bangalore trans port authorities and recommend ing that they imple ment a centralised single platform ap plication where the government can monitor and identify rogue drivers," aushik, founder of the said Kiran Kaushik, founder of the Traxoid Automations, the parent company for Oxpox.
Sanjay Kumar, joint commissioner of police of Pune, said such technological innovations can be of help with "responsible human intervention". "Technology in itself cannot be foolproof and overly depending on them can create unnecessary stress," he said.
Ospox started operations in February and is targeting to cover at least 8,000 school buses in Bangalore City. "We are getting demand not just from Indian schools but from governments in Indonesia, Malaysia and other developing countries," said Venkat Dhondale, 33, business development manager at the company. Ospox has invested around Rs 24 lakh in the venture and is expecting to make monthly revenue of Rs 12 lakh by the year end.
Parents don't mind the cost. "We feel safe knowing where their school bus is at any point of time. Recent incidents in the news have everyone worried," said Vishnuvardhan Reddy, whose daughter studies in class VII in Oakridge International in Hyderabad.
Atiq Mohiuddin, director of facilities at the Deans Academy in Bangalore, said supervision of bus drivers have improved vastly since subscribing to NorthStar. "Earlier we only had the driver's word as to where they were, or why they were delayed," he said. "I am also able to incentivise good drivers." Deepak Cherry George launched GuruSparsh in 2011 along with his cofounders Vivek J Babu and Akhil Shankar. The startup developed a system that alerted parents instantly if a child missed attendance and offered it free to government schools.
