BANGALORE: The next time you want to visit the loo when you are out of office, on the road or travelling, all you need to do is find the location on your phone.
The makers of the women’s safety app - Nirbhaya, have integrated information about all public toilets in cities and villages into the app. “We have collected locations of all working toilets and this will be available on a map in the app,”said Gajanan Sakhare, CEO, Smart Cloud Infotech.
The Nirbhaya application allows a woman to send a distress message in an emergency situation to contacts chosen by her. Available for free, the app sends an alarm in the form of an SMS, with the location of the woman, by using GPS.
Developed after the Delhi rape incident, the app not only allows an alert to be sent in case of molestation, but also accidents or other such emergency situations.
The makers decided to integrate information about toilets after many women complained about how difficult it was to find one when they left their homes. “A company which sends several women on various forms of field work had complaints from the female executives that finding public toilets was a huge problem,” says Sakhare. “We started collecting data about all functional public toilets - like those in petrol bunks and made a list. This information will soon be integrated into the application and can be accessed as easily as finding the next ATM,”he explained.
The developers have concentrated on not just urban areas but also rural areas. “Many women nowadays have to travel to remote areas and step out of the city for work. This information will be very helpful to them,”Sakhare says. “The update to the application will be out soon,” he added.