Students of Shadan create ‘Guardian Jacket’ for women safety

Hyderabad: In an attempt to ensure the safety of women after the Disha assault and murder case, two college students launched the “Guardian Jacket”, to shock the offenders in case they attack women.

Osaid Sharif and Faiq Hussain students of CEC and mechanical engineering respectively, at Shadan College of Engineering, pondered as to why one must wait for a stringent law to be implemented for ensuring women’s safety. Thinking along these lines they decided to create a jacket.

Speaking to Siasat.com, Osaid Sharif said, “We decided to take an initiative and launch our company by the name of Guardian”. The co-founder further said that the Jacket has 18 sensitive points, which would generate 2000 watts of electricity while the jacket is activated.

These touch-points are placed inside the jacket, covering the chest and the back. These shock points have been designed carefully to ensure that women using them don’t tase themselves.

“The jacket is made through a mixture of cloth, polymer, and rubber. The polymer used to make the jacket is available only in Delhi at present,” Sharif explained.

He further said that the jacket consists of a GPS tracker, which is activated at the time of distress, sending SOS signals to the nearest police station via an SMS.

With regards to the safety of those who wear the jacket and those around them, Sharif said that it has a key chain that must be switched on if one feels unsafe.

The college duo initially thought of creating a one-off jacket. Their innovation acumen was coupled with entrepreneurship, as the duo were inducted to an incubation centre named Edventure park in August 2020.

“We initially created leather jackets and jolted ourselves enough before distributing these to a few women,” Sharif said. However, based on the feedback, the duo decided to use 100 per cent cotton. This was done to ensure that the vest doesn’t look out of place on any outfit.

Sharif and Hussain divided the work among themselves, where the former takes care of the technical part of the creation and the latter deals with the marketing of the product.

“We are currently conducting a pilot test of the jackets, which are supposed to be pre-ordered at guadianjacket.com. We plan a full-scale launch of the product in the market by February or March 2022,” said Sharif.