The Safety and Security group was able to make significant progress revamping our business model and developing our technology this week. On the technology side, Russell and Ted continued building our the application and looking at external APIs. We have decided on the features we are looking to have by the demo, and our confident that we’ll be able to build out technology to match the use cases and proof of concept that we need. Our Meteor application is shooting to have a reactive front-end that is mobile-first. We have a proof of concept workflow from the terminal that our API commands work (in plain english: we gracefully scale down by making sure ALL citizens of Vizag can use our application. We have shown that we can hook our app up to SMS, Twitter, Facebook, and the native application, so we can reach citizens on whatever platform they use most.)

On the business side, we have been crunching the numbers on a one-time purchase as opposed to a freemium subscription-based model. We have incorporated judge feedback on Indian consumer price sensitivity, and spoke with Professor Darwin on how to price such that we are sustainable but also make as large of an impact as possible. Towards that end, we have been inspired by a judge’s comments on how valuable our data is – a crucial part of our solution’s value. Finally, we have looked at similar solutions that have been done in the past. We’ve find solutions that have been deployed in San Diego and Utah, and are digging deeper into their successes to see we can stand on the shoulders of giants. All in all, it was a very productive week, and we are excited to show the class what we have learned this Thursday.

The Safety and Security Group

Ted Xiao, Russell Nibbelink, Kaitlen Nguyen, Alex Feibleman, Dzmitry Yahorau