Keep a watch on your kid's safety in school bus

BANGALORE, INDIA: "Safety" today has become a serious concern across the length and breadth of this nation. With the recent rise of molestation and kidnapping incidences throughout the country, video surveillance in school buses have become a top priority. At this juncture, NorthStar has brought a simplified solution which helps parents to keep a check on the children in the school buses.

The founders of NorthStar, Bobbie Kalra and Shyam Ramamurthy, wanted to create a product that would help school authorities run safer, more efficient transport services for the children.

Northstar through their tracking and monitoring solution for school buses keeps the parents notified about their children's locations and movements right from the boarding time till the end of the journey. For example, when a child boards the school bus, the location of the vehicle and also where the child gets off the bus,  is notified to the parents. They are also notified when there is a delay in the arrival of the bus.

An Android app is also rendered to help the parents and schools track the children's real-time location. Another app is provided to the transport administrator to track and notify any changes in the routes on real-time basis.

Shyam Ramamurthy, founder, NorthStar said, "The solution tracks the children's designated pick up and drop points. The entire travel data is recorded and every ten seconds information is uploaded in the cloud server for which access is given to both parents and school. It sends alerts, if the child gets down at a wrong stop, so that people can immediately react and avert any unfortunate mishap."

The solution provides another interesting feature to avert accidents. It tracks the driving habits of the drivers over a span of few days and scores them. The driver merit system can help to segregate the rash drivers and also lets them improve on their skills through articulated training programs.

"While providing bus video surveillance system, we understood reliability is a critical issue. The sorry state of cellular connectivity is also a major roadblock.  So, we have built systems that work well despite occasional drops in connectivity.  The data gets stored and re-transmitted when the connectivity resumes. Also, the devices have comparatively bigger antennas which provide a better connectivity," explained  Ramamurthy.

The solution is available in a monthly subscription based model and costs only Rs. 50-75 per child. The 'Black Box' which ensures safety in the bus, is provided to every school bus for Rs. 10,000.

Currently the solution is being used across 150 schools in India, managing over 120,000 children. The Government of Abu Dhabi has also deployed this solution and is being used in over 6,000 buses securing 240,000 children.