Meet five startups helping businesses get safely back to work

As India begins to emerge from the prolonged lockdown on account of the Covid-19 pandemic, corporate enterprises across sectors are looking for safer ways to resume operations. Not surprisingly, technology is playing a key role in enabling businesses to get back to work. 

The technology solutions being deployed by enterprises focus on capabilities such as emergency outreach, self-reporting and exposure management. One of the earliest companies to launch such a smart mobile application suite within a month of the pandemic breakout was California-based software company ServiceNow. The firm’s application, which it calls Now Platform, features smart artificial intelligence (AI) and analytics capabilities for employees to work from any environment and streamlines major business decisions digitally to ensure minimal physical contact. Since the launch of the safe workplace app suite in March, the company claims to have had 6,000 installations across 1,000 organisations worldwide.

Like ServiceNow, a number of homegrown startups, sensing an emerging market opportunity, have also recently rolled out smart solutions to enable a safe work environment. Here’s a quick look at some of these startups.

Zenatix: A Hero Electronix startup, founded in 2013 by IIT Delhi engineers Rahul Bhalla, Vishal Bansal and Amarjeet Singh, Zenatix is an energy-management analytics platform that helps managers save more than 10% on their energy costs. In May 2020, the company launched solutions such as ZenSafe and ZenMonitor to enable businesses to resume operations safely. 

The internet of things (IoT) based solutions offer real-time monitoring and alert systems to ensure safety and compliance at the workplace and for the foot soldiers engaged in providing ecommerce, logistics and home services in an automated manner without the need for human intervention. 

ZenSafe is a cloud-connected three-in-one contactless employee safety and attendance solution for employees and visitors entering a workspace or a business. It uses facial recognition technology for attendance and access control, and seamlessly interfaces with existing HR systems over cloud APIs. It also features contactless infrared technology for measuring the body temperature of a person, and warns if the person is not wearing a mask. 

ZenMonitor is an early detection body temperature monitoring solution for a large field force who typically are not screened for fever at workspaces or offices. The solution includes a cloud connected arm band which is worn on upper biceps, and transmits real time body temperature data to cloud via the person’s mobile phone. It raises alarms for persons having fever so that organisations can take appropriate quarantine decisions immediately. 

Smarten Spaces: Smarten Spaces, a Singapore-based startup that provides AI-driven solutions for real estate management, is now assisting businesses with its AI-based back to work application, Jumpree WorkSafe, with a 10-step response plan focusing on sanitised workplaces, contactless movement and frequent health check-ups. 

Through a single app, Jumpree WorkSafe ensures every employee, tenant or visitor is pre-screened for travel and health, tracking every entry and exit along with temperature readings. Other features include social distancing measures at dining areas, monitoring and managing the provision of critical supplies and resources, as well as improving communication with employees working remotely and in the workplace. 

The company, which has a presence in India, was founded in 2017 by former president of Cisco Systems’ India and SAARC businesses Dinesh Malkani, another former Cisco executive Anushka Verghese and Prithvi Shergill, who was previously an HCL Technologies executive.

San8ize: The Delhi-based startup has developed an end-to-end AI based platform to help enterprises keep a track of their employees’ health. 

The company was started in March 2020 by Rajeev Arora and Manu Grover. Arora  has been part of Mumbai Angels since 2009 and is also the managing director of Paramount Wheels. Grover is the founder of Healthgenie, an ecommerce platform for health and wellness products, and also managing director of GST Corporation, which sells health equipment. 

San8ize claims to empower businesses to control their entire enterprise through a single dashboard with live data feeds of employee health, thereby creating employee engagement, training, risk mitigation, tracking, traceability and supplies of Covid-19 prevention merchandise. “The product works through San8ize mobile app where corporates sign up their employees and create curated feeds for training and to process restructuring solutions. The data of employees is completely private and is geo-fenced,” Arora told TechCircle.

Hipla: Singapore and Kolkata headquartered IoT company Hipla Technologies has launched a solution to help employees remain safe. 

The software-as-a-service (SaaS) solution, called Contatrack.ai, helps companies with contact tracing capabilities and enables employees to maintain social distancing norms. The solution leverages IoT, AI and computer vision capabilities to notify individuals when they are at the risk of breaching social distancing norms. 

It uses a company’s surveillance footage to help organisations adhere to government mandates and conduct contact tracing in an automated manner, with no hardware dependency, the company said in a statement issued in June 2020 when it also raised $357,000 in a seed funding round from a consortium of undisclosed investors from India and Singapore. The company was set up in 2019 by Sandeep Kaul.

DROR: Gurugram headquartered DROR Labs has introduced a citizen safety app to support employees and manufacturing plants get back to work. 

The company has introduced enterprise solutions like parameterised social distancing feature, invasion alarm, containment zone alerts and self-declaration forms. The app helps the HR department track and preview the team’s real-time social distancing score, enabling them to maintain social distancing within the office premises and sustain a safe work environment. 

In addition to the above, the app also sends a daily, weekly and fortnightly tracker to users, through which they can analyse whether social distancing protocols have been maintained or not. Using geo-fencing technology, the app helps identify and alert employees if they are within a 500 metre proximity of a Covid-19 containment zone. It has also introduced an invasion alarm that alerts users of any social distancing violations in the workplace premises. The alarm uses bluetooth signals to alert the user if they are within a two-metre radius of another user, reiterating the need to maintain social distancing. The company also raised seed funding last month.