Meet the SHEROES - Saloni Malhotra

A Pune University engineer, Saloni founded and ran DesiCrew, a for-profit organization focused on creating knowledge-based livelihood opportunities in small towns and rural areas. She recently founded safecity.in, citizen’s initiative and platform to share information on sexual abuse in India. Saloni tells us more about her and her work -

Tell us more about you.

I co-founded Safecity, a citizen’s initiative and platform to share information on sexual abuse in India. Safecity was selected as the only international participant in the Fast FWD porgram organised by the City of the Phiadelphia.

Prior to Safecity, I founded and ran DesiCrew, a for-profit organization focused on creating knowledge-based livelihood opportunities in small towns and rural areas. I stepped down as a the CEO in March 2012, after bringing on board a venture fund and handing over to a professional management team. I continue to participate on the board.

I also mentor Traveller Kids, a young start-up that creates edu-taiment toys for 7-12 years olds. Am also an Advisor to Start Up!, a social business incubator in Delhi and Sevamob, a start-up that serves low income consumers via primary healthcare and insurance

How did safecity.in come up? How has it made a difference?

Safecity, is a platform that encourages people to share their personal stories of sexual harassment and abuse in public spaces.

The data on abuse and harassment is never consistent and every agency agrees that it is an under reported problem. As many as 80% of the victims choose not to report to the police due to various reasons. Therefore there is little or no official records of sexual harassment and technically if there are not enough reports or statistics, how can we go about understanding this problem and solving the same?

Safecity encourages women to break their silence and report either anonymously or with their identity. This data gets aggregated as hot spots on a map indicating trends at a local level. The idea is to make this data useful for individuals, local communities and local administration to solve the problem at the local level.

Individuals can check safety rating of areas just the way they check rating of movies, books and restaurants. They can then make choices which suit their needs the best.

Community groups can choose to use the data to bring about positive change in their neighbourhoods. When they approach law enforcement or municipalities with data and possible solutions, there is a stronger case to bring about change.

Law enforcement and municipalities can benefit from crowd-sourced data and leverage common citizens to be eyes and ears for them. Keeping cities safe is a community responsibility and citizens need to play an active role.

To achieve this vision, Safecity wishes to enable multiple channels of reporting and share this information for positive action. A web platform, mobile app, SMS and IVR based reporting for those not connected on the internet.

Has anyone been held accountable (have the police or authorities interfered at all?

We do not focus on individual cases but on larger trends that are emerging. Eg. In the Shakti mills case the accused confessed that they had rapes 4 women at the same spot which means many other attempts would have been made. If a few people had reported the spot as a harassment probe area, different action could have been taken. We have been working with the police in  2 states to see how this information can be made useful to them. The work is in early stages and cannot be shared till something concrete emerges. 

Why do you feel there is a need for something like this to exist?

People who harass do so in their own comfort zones. Silent on the part of victims and bystanders makes them more confident and the harassment only grows. An informal reporting system is required to share such information maybe trivial to report to the police but can be useful to someone else. While there is a new to change the laws, the question we ask is what can we do as ordinary citizens to change the situation. Isn't it the society that created this problem in the first place? What can we do to make change? ?

Desicrew creates BPO opportunities in rural areas. How do you manage the infrastructure and logistics?

We have invested heavily in infrastructure and created reliable back up options. ?All infra is standard and comes with SLAs and contracts. Trained teams manage the smaller issues and larger issues are escalated to the vendor ??

Message to all SHEROES out there. 
In the short life that we have we need to take the opportunity and live our life to the fullest. We owe it to ourselves to do what we really desire to do. If you really want to do something, get up an do it. No one stops us expect we ourselves.