Tech Talk: An app that rescues you in emergencies.

Byline: Mutaher Khan

Do you know the helpline for Fire Brigade? Any idea who to call when your car gets towed while you were busy shopping at the mall? No? Probably most of us don't either. There should be a better way than Googling and trying out random numbers, right? Well, that's exactly the pitch of Team Siren.

Siren app is an all-in-one emergency portal that wants to be there for you when you are in a crisis. From instantly calling an ambulance to finding the helpline for your district's police station, it hopes to do it all. How does it work? Download the app and sign up using details like name, phone number, city etc. You can also add another person's contacts as In Case of Emergency (ICE).

The home page shows a blinking button which if slid, will take you to a screen showing your location and nine emergency contacts. Plus, there is a directory of relevant numbers - such as Edhi ambulance, Cyber Rescue or railway enquiry among others - which you can call there and then. The app is bilingual and also shows your history of emergencies.

The app is actually a product of Hysab Kytab - a fintech that lets you manage your income and savings among other things - which in turn is owned by Jaffer Business Systems, an IT solutions and data company under the banner of Jaffer Group. It's headed by Yasir Ilyas - a US return with experience in IT advisory and business process automation in organisations like KPMG and IKEA - and Javeria Haseeb as co-founder and marketing lead. .

'I grew up in the US where 911 is the first point of reference in an emergency, but here there was no such product. We could either copy their way or build something better from scratch using the technology at our disposal,' the country head recalls.

'At the very least, we wanted to build a directory that showed you all relevant numbers you can directly call, based on your location. So the contact list available to you in Karachi would be different from the one to a user in Lahore,' he further explains.

Let's talk money now, which becomes tricky since an emergency portal should be a public service. What's the income stream? 'The product is free for everyone to use and we want to keep it that way,' says Ilyas.

Is that just the new way of doing business or am I being too conservative? 'From our end, it's still more of a corporate social responsibility project but if we take Siren beyond our borders, to other developing countries where again the same gap exists, there obviously...

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