While working for top notch IT companies like Google and Qualcomm in Bangalore, Senthil Kumar got a lucrative job offer abroad. But he chose his hometown over other places because he wanted to bring about a change in Temple town Madurai.
“I was tired of people's perception about the town and the youth here.” So along with his college mate Dhinesh Pandian, also an alumnus of KLN College, he decided to build cutting edge technology sitting in Madurai. It all started with a voluntary programme ‘Meet to Mentor’ four years ago when Senthil began training groups of engineering graduates and anyone interested in Information Technology. In the process he gradually created a skilled workforce. Today, he has 12 members in the core team apart from a supportive band of young vibrant city youth. Together they develop mobile applications for addressing multiple issues.
One of their projects is the app Madurai Kavalan, designed to help Madurai District Police to prevent burglary. There's a procedure in existence where people need to inform local police station when they are going out of town, so that the cops can monitor the locked house. For this purpose, the district police have formed Locked House System Monitoring unit in all stations. But unfortunately, not many people have availed it. “When the problem was brought to us, we decided to develop an app to simplify the procedure and make it hassle-free for users. That's how Madurai Kavalan was born,” says Dhinesh.
The app is a small size, user-friendly platform in Tamil, which allows a user to register and request monitoring service for their locked homes. “All one needs to do is furbish an identification number like Aadhar, license etc, details like name, address, number and for how long they would be away. It reaches the back-end system installed at the office of the Superintendent of Police and from there is forwarded to the local unit station,” expalins Dhinesh. “The idea to prevent theft and burglary. We worked for over three months on the app, much of it which was market survey. Since the users live in suburbs like Melur, Usilampatti etc, we had to make it in Tamil for the rural population. We found that 87 percent of people have smartphones with basic android platform and hence we launched the app.”
Madurai Kavalan also has contact details of police personnel in 62 units in the district limit. The police can also broadcast any announcement in the app. Users can also lodge complaints, upload pictures of suspicious persons, unclaimed baggage or vehicles. “It also eases the work of the cops. On their regular patrol, it becomes easy for them to identify the locked houses and monitor them. Within two days of the launch, the app saw 1,000 downloads and 20 monitoring requests,” says Senthil.
The duo earlier developed an SoS app for the Madurai City Police and have not charged a fee for their work so far. “We want to create awareness about how technology can be handy in solving problems,” says Senthil who worked as senior research scientist in 5G techonology at Samsung. “We have built a hardware platform for fleet management of automobiles with tracking, theft prevention and performance assessment features. Called the Geo Shadow, the product already has over 1,000 customers. It's an instrument attached to the car and the notification reaches the mobile application. Police patrol vehicles are entirely covered by us, apart from lorry services in Thoothukudi, fireworks vehicles in sivakasi that use our product.”
Geo Eye is a pilot project that the friends are now working on at the SP office. It's a camera just like CCTV, but with artificial intelligence – enabled with face recognition and detection. “It will have face recognition feature along with a stored database of accused details. If suppose, an accused crosses the area, it will send an alert to the backend system. Geo Eye can be most useful for jewellery shops to avoid burglary, as regular offenders can easily be nabbed,” explains Senthil. “We also plan to propose installation of camerasat Traffic signals and main roads. The product can identify road users flouting traffic rules and penalty challans will reach their homes directly.”
The startup is currently also working on a smart street platform. “We adopt an entire street and provide security solution through camera, a wifi platform to air civic issues and offline connectivity network. It is provided for Rs.99 per month per household and the users are connected to a web mesh that functions as a local network. From dustbin collection, recycling, electricity etc, everything can be managed through this platform,” says Senthil. “We see this as a start to the larger Smart City mission and are in the process of roping in the Collector’s office and the Corporation.”
As a pilot, they have done it in three streets – DRO colony in Teppakulam with 18 houses, Vasantham Street in Vadipatti with 13 houses and Ettiyar Street in Tirumangalam with 22 houses. “Resident associations could be takers of the product. Geo mesh is an effective local web on which one can call anyone connected in the web unlimited number of times, create their own social network so privacy remains intact and the personal data is not stored in someone else's server,” says Dhinesh.
Hello Collector, Swachh Madurai and Hyper local are some of the other apps they are currently developing. “Hyper Local is our answer to Corporates like Big Basket. Ours will be a platform to empower local sellers and supermarkets by connecting them with local consumers,” says Senthil.
Technovation is another event that annually invites solution-oriented tech proposals from budding technocrafts. We need to choose a local issue and solve it with a mobile app, submit it as a video to the judges. Since 2014, our team of young IT developers from Madurai have been winning Technovation competitions in California. Though we still face discouragement from people, with our small successes we hope to make a big impact in future.”
