When Brindala Mallappa, the President and COO of IonIdea, heard about the heinous crime committed on a young girl, later to be known as Nirbhaya, she was totally moved. She was very angry that something so terrible could happen in our society.
As a woman herself, a mother of a young teenage girl, a sister, a daughter, an executive who has employed hundreds of women in her business, and as a very concerned citizen, Brindala resolved to develop a technology solution and an emergency response ecosystem that would together prevent crimes against women, children and the elderly.
The solution, she decided, should do a lot more than sending out alerts when somebody is in danger. While it should collaborate with and alert police and other first responders, it should also work effectively in areas where first responders are not nearby to come to the rescue of the victim in a timely manner. No matter where a person is they should be able to get help quickly.
Moreover, the solution should be universal, work seamlessly across all cities and rural areas in the country, and while traveling in other countries too. It should work in several local languages to enable non-english speaking users to benefit from the safety and security provided by it.
Last but not the least, Brindala decided it should be extremely affordable, available for free to the poor, and at extremely low costs to everybody else.
With this vision, she set out to explore technologies for the product, and organizational collaborations which would be the basis of the emergency response ecosystem. Today, that vision has taken the shape of GuardOn.