Leaf Wearables: A startup that works for child and women safety

Manek Mehta is the co-founder of Leaf Wearables – a multiple award winning Indian tech startup that has come out with a safety device for women. According to Mehta, the company is now working on two hardware devices – safety device for children and senior citizens. The company’s mission is to make one million families safer by 2017 . Leaf Wearables has released its first safety device recently called Safer which can be worn as a pendant and has an in-built panic button which can be connected to the phone and also to one’s loved one’s phones. The pendant is rust proof and has a non-corrosive metal casing. When a user buys the jewellery, the app has to be downloaded and synced with the jewellery. In case of emergencies, the pendant has to be pressed which will trigger an alarm to registered users or to anyone in the vicinity who are using the application. There is a 10 second window just in case of a false alarm. The user can then disable the request in case of a false alarm. The app uses cell towers in its vicinity, Wi-Fi routers and Global Positioning System (GPS) to track and locate users. If there is no internet connection, text messaging can also be used. The device also has sound notifications, which serves as a reminder to check it. In case you forgot to wear the device, it will send a reminder via your phone. The device is available in three colours – black, green and blue, and is priced at Rs 3500. The company has won a slew of awards even before its inception. It won the first award in October 2014, at the Gitex Solutions in Dubai where it received 1500 of the votes of the 1800 votes that were cast. The second award was the Philips Blueprint Award – an innovation award in December 2014, IIT Mumbai Eureka Business Plan and, the 10 minutes million award followed by the Ericsson Innovation Award and the Program DST-Lockheed Martin India Innovation Growth Plan award. Chirag Kapil, Co-Founder of Leaf Wearables also won the Young Student Entrepreneur award at the Singapore Business Plan Competition. Leaf Wearables announced that it had raised $250,000 – approximately Rs. 1.6 core in seed funding from Ajeet Khurana - serial entrepreneur, Mumbai Angels, Jinesh Shah - founding partner at Omnivore Ventures, Vikram Chachra - Co-Founder of Eight Capital, a Special Situations Investment Firm, Dr. Aniruddha Malpani - angel investor and director at Solidarity Investment Advisors, Vijay Talreja - angel investor, Co-Founder and director at Adapty Inc and others. The funding will be used to grow Safer, a smart safety device that was chosen amongst the top 10 innovative startups in India by Department of Science and Technology who accompanied Prime Minister Narendra Modi on his visit to Silicon Valley to participate in first India-U.S. Startup Konnect  in September 2015. Since its inception in February 2015 by students of IIT Delhi and Delhi Technological University – Avinash Bansal, Ayush Banka, Chiraag Kapil, Manik Mehta and Paras Batra, the company has been functioning on founders’ money and the amount that they have won in various innovation and business plan competitions together amounting to $80,000. Speaking on this new development for business growth, Manik Mehta, Co-Founder, Leaf Wearables, said, “The money will be utilised to expand the product offering. So far we have been on pre-orders but this seed funding will help us create an inventory. This money will also help us expand our technical team for product enhancement and improve the product offering by introducing new jewellery designs. We are also looking at the global market, but India being our major focus currently. The Safer app is available on play store and will soon be on App store too.”