Safer travels for women globally

Sujay Arora is a Waterloo engineering student now but he grew up in New Delhi, a city where recent public protests have raised awareness about violence against women.

Sujay Arora, co-founder of Caboom

So Arora and three of his friends have started a company called Caboom, which is developing a new smartphone app that he hopes will make women in India’s largest city safer. The tool will allow female travelers to book the closest women-driven cabs using their smartphone. It also sends information about the taxi and its driver to family and friends before the woman gets into the cab.

“Safety is a massive issue,” says the third-year electrical engineering student. “If the driver knows his passenger has sent out information about him, it’s going to be a deterrent. It’s not going to solve the problem but it’s going to act as a deterrent to violence against women.”

App will be free for passengers
 

Women’s safety hit the news last year after the fatal gang rape of a 23-year-old physiotherapy student on a bus in New Delhi. The application for women travelers is just part of a larger tool being developed by himself and three other friends who still live in New Dehli. Their new company, called Caboom, will help all passengers find the nearest cab. Arora and his three collaborators are partnering with SoftLayer, a company recently acquired by IBM, under their Catalyst Startup Program.

Arora says the application will be free to passengers. Revenue will come through the taxi companies who will pay Caboom a fixed percent of their booking fee. The application will make taxis safer and more convenient for passengers but will also save taxi companies money because they will have a smarter, more efficient system of matching drivers to the closest passengers.

“If you want to get somewhere quickly, there could be a cab from a company four kilometres away and another company one kilometer away but you’d never know which one to call,” says Arora.

Arora says being able to travel safely at night is a huge issue for women working in call centres in India. Many women have to work nights because they are answering inquiries from Western customers who are in a different time zone. Because of the recent sexual assaults, women are afraid to travel at night and unable to work.