A mobile app to help women in distress

NEW DELHI: Women in India can now look forward to alerting their friends and family through the push of a button on sensing danger using a mobile application called ‘Fight Back.’ Developed by mobile value added services provider CanvasM, the application tracks a user’s location and sends SOS messages to selected contacts in case of an emergency.
“We feel the application can help make a woman feel safe, especially given the current law and order situation. The app allows them to press panic button whenever they feel unsafe. It tracks the location using GPS and alerts the right people,” CanvasM CEO Jagdish Mitra told PTI. The application tracks a user’s location and sends SOS messages to selected contacts in case of an emergency.
The company is also in the process of integrating the solution with Delhi Police’s back-end IT infrastructure. “This will enable Delhi Police to also get messages when somebody calls out for help and prompt action can be taken,” he added. Fight Back is available for smartphones running on Android, Blackberry and Symbian operating systems, he said. “We will soon come up with a similar SMS-based application so that the benefits can be extended to non-smartphone users as well,” he added. While the application has been available for sometime now, it has seen about 3,000-4,000 downloads.