Every startup begins with a question that refuses to leave you alone.
Mine was simple.
It started with a list
We were sitting together, just two friends who wanted to build something meaningful, asking ourselves the question every founder eventually asks: what problem is worth solving?
We started listing the major issues we faced ourselves. The issues India faces every single day. And somewhere in that list between poverty and pollution and unemployment, one word kept coming back.
Safety.
Not safety as an abstract concept. Safety as a basic human need. Safety as something that should be as fundamental as food and water and shelter.
And when we dug into it, when we opened the NCRB reports and read the data and spoke to women across cities and villages we realised something that shook us.
Safety is not a privilege in India. It should be a right. But millions of women live every day as though it is neither.
That is when an idea became a purpose. That is when a startup became a mission.
18 million reasons the answer is not another app
Eighteen million.
And yet a crime against a woman is registered in this country every 71 seconds.
So we asked ourselves the uncomfortable question if the apps exist, why is the problem still here?
We studied every solution in the market. More than ten players Safelet, Life360, bSafe, Raksha, Safetipin, 112 India. And we found the same pattern everywhere.
An app with no device. A device with no support. An SOS that goes to a number nobody answers. No follow-through. No justice. No real system.
Everyone built a piece of the puzzle. Nobody built the complete picture.
And there was something else, something even more fundamental.
A safety app requires you to unlock your phone, find the app, and press a button. In a real threat situation, you have seconds, not minutes. You do not have time to unlock your screen.
More importantly, she has to be using the app for it to work. And nobody uses a safety app every day. It sits on her phone, forgotten, until the moment she needs it most.
Why jewellery
She wears jewellery every single day.
Not because she is told to. Not because it is functional. Because it is beautiful. Because it is part of who she is.
A bangle. A ring. A bracelet. These are not accessories. For the Indian woman they are identity. They are tradition. They are love given form.
What if the thing that protects her was also the thing she already wears?
What if safety did not look like a device but like jewellery?
That one question changed everything.
RIKA is not a gadget she has to remember to carry. It is jewellery she already wants to wear. And within that jewellery one press and people who love her will get alerted. Even without her phone. She does not have to think about it. She does not have to unlock anything. She just has to wear it. Which she already does.
Who I am building RIKA for
When people ask me who RIKA is for. I always say the same thing.
RIKA is for every desh ki beti.
For the girl who left her village and moved to a city to study so she could build a better life for her family. Who takes the last bus home from college because the library closes at 9. Who calls her mother every night to say she reached safely because her mother cannot sleep until she hears that call.
For the working woman, the mother who leaves home before sunrise and comes back after dark. Who travels alone. Who carries the weight of her family on her shoulders and still has to carry the weight of her own safety too.
For the girl stepping out for the first time. The woman starting over. The mother who worries more about her daughter than herself.
India has 700 million women. Each one of them deserves to walk into the world to study, to work, to live without fear.
RIKA is not just a product. It is a declaration. That she matters. That her safety is not negotiable. That she does not have to choose between being who she is and being safe.
What I want her to feel
I have been asked many times what is RIKA's best feature?
My answer is never the eSIM. Never the three-layer architecture. Never the live GPS.
My answer is always this:
Not a device. Not an algorithm. Someone.
I want her to feel beautiful and strong at the same moment. I want her to feel elegant because she is. I want her to feel valued because she is, even when the world forgets to tell her so.
Most of all, I want her to feel that she is not alone.
Because that is the real problem safety technology has never solved. Not the speed of the alert. Not the range of the signal. The feeling of being alone in a moment of fear.
RIKA cannot promise that nothing bad will ever happen. No technology can.
But RIKA can promise that if something does five people who love her will know. Immediately. Without her having to do anything more than press a button on the jewellery she was already wearing.
That is the promise. That is why RIKA exists.
The journey is just beginning
Our first prototypes are being prepared. Several women are already on the waitlist.
And every single day, I go back to that original question.
Why does no one feel safe?
Not because I do not know the answer anymore. But because it reminds me why we cannot stop.
RIKA is my sankalp. My vow. To every woman who has ever ended a phone call with "I reached safely" because someone was waiting to hear those words.
She should not have to say it. She should simply always be safe.