Preity Zinta thinks there's been no change in people's mindset when it comes to violence against women and the victim shaming that inevitably follows. The Bollywood actor and owner of the Indian Premier League team Kings XI Punjab is determined to amend this grim situation. For the past five years, she’s been working on Kavach — not to be confused with the government’s M-Kavach, a security solution for your cell phones — a platform for women’s safety. “People didn’t take [my initiative] seriously and these were important people with money; influencers who said why don’t you become a social worker?” says Zinta recalling the arduous and heartbreaking process to get Kavach started. “If they don’t go out after eight they’re safe or half the girls are asking for it and some are doing it so they want to trap the guy and extort money,” says Zinta with evident frustration
Soon to be launched in September, Kavach has been created in association with Anthony Moorhouse, who’s the founder and chief executive of emergency management business Dynamiq. Based on a subscription model, it will be available as a bluetooth device at ₹318 per month.
Once activated, the platform geo-tags your phone after collecting your medical history, audio sample and list of emergency contacts. “After five seconds of pressing down on its button, the app/ device turns into an audio recorder,” explains Zinta. “Whatever happens around you gets recorded and goes into the cloud.” Simultaneously, a call is also made to the nearest police station while the operation centre sends across a despatch team to the user’s location. Zinta adds that a person’s voice is as unique as a fingerprint, allowing for the collected audio files to be admissible as forensic evidence in a court. When the despatch team (between two to five people comprising men and women) arrives, based on the gravity of the incident, they will either assist in lodging an FIR or seek medical help. “The team — mostly from army, special forces or medical backgrounds — will come with body cameras and mics,” says the actor. “If the police has not arrived on time, there’s proof [the team] has not tampered with the crime scene.” The material collected from the cameras and mic is also uploaded to the cloud.
Kavach will first be launched in Pune where Zinta’s team has reached out to colleges, MNCs and call centres, places that require women to be out and about. The platform, kicks off with 50,000 subscriptions initially, offering 5,000 to women of martyr families or those in the defence forces: Paramilitary, BSF, CRPF, Army, police, navy, air force, etc. “We’re opening a crowdfunding campaign for that,” says Zinta.
Kavach then launches in Delhi, followed by Mumbai and the bigger cities of the country. “Villages can only happen when CSR of companies become available,” she says. “Kavach is made for the working women. I don’t have the money even if I sold myself to go into the villages because the infrastructure is not there.”
Once the initiative is launched, Zinta hopes to unite her subscribers through offline events. For instance, she plans on having at least three conferences every year. “We’re not going to tell girls don’t go out and don’t drink but what we can tell them in these safety conferences is to hold their own drink so no one slips anything in it.”
As of now, Zinta has single-handedly funded all of Kavach’s expenses. But she’s certain she’s onto a winning product. “I will put my life behind Kavach and in the end it’s something that will have made a difference. If it doesn’t, I survived Ishkq in Paris (2013),” she says, referring to the box office disaster which was also touted to be her big ticket comeback to Bollywood. “I didn’t die, so this will be ok,” she says.Kavach certainly hopes to help tackle the pressing issue of women’s safety in the country. We certainly hope the initiative can pull off what it promises.
Visit kavach-safety for more details.
