Kanav Gupta.
Whereas most students are preoccupied with academic issues at their age, 20-year-old entrepreneur Kanav Gupta has decided to take a bite out of the very big issue plaguing Indian society right now, that of women's safety. Being the founder of SafarSafe, an innovative AI-driven route safety app, he wants to move the discourse away from being a reaction to a situation and towards a way of preventing something bad from happening by empowering women to choose safe routes even before setting off on their journey.
1. At just 20 years old, what inspired you to build SafarSafe, and what was the defining moment that convinced you this solution was needed?
Every day we read another headline about a woman being harassed, followed or assaulted while simply trying to get home. For a few days everyone talks about it, everyone says something should change, and then life moves on until the next incident. That cycle really bothered me.
As a 20-year-old student at Delhi University, I kept asking myself one question: Why are we only trying to help after something goes wrong? Why aren't we helping to prevent it in the first place?
I know women's safety is an incredibly complex problem. No app alone can solve it. But I also believe complexity shouldn't stop us from trying.
SafarSafe was started by three of us. Over time, the other two co-founders decided to step back from day-to-day involvement, not because they didn't believe in the idea, but because they had different academic and personal priorities. They still support me whenever I need guidance, but I've taken on the core responsibility of leading and building the company.
Along the way, we also started getting early validation that this idea mattered. We participated in startup competitions at Hansraj College, University of Delhi and MAIMS,IP University, where we were part of the startup arena. At Hansraj in particular, we connected with over 100 women who interacted with the idea, gave feedback, and even followed our journey afterwards because they were genuinely interested in what we were building. That early response gave us a lot of clarity that this wasn't just an idea on paper, it was something people related to.
We also got our first mentor during the Hansraj experience, which helped us think more seriously about how to shape SafarSafe beyond just an idea.
Later, we went to a national-level competition at IIT Bombay, where we were selected among the top 80 teams. It was a huge learning experience for us, but also a reality check. At that stage, many of the other teams had already built products, had traction, and were on their revenue journey. In comparison, we were still very early. It made us realise that while the idea was strong, we needed more time to build and refine before competing at that level.
We took that feedback seriously and came back to improve the product instead of rushing ahead.
More recently, during my summer school in London, I had the chance to speak about SafarSafe with my teacher and several other people who were genuinely curious about the idea. I also met a few founders and CEOs who encouraged me to continue building it and mentioned that the UK has strong support systems for tech-driven social impact startups, especially for students pursuing higher studies. They suggested that if I continue my master's there in the future, there could be opportunities for funding and ecosystem support as well.
All of these experiences from college competitions in India to conversations in London have reinforced one thing for me: this problem is real, and people everywhere relate to it.
That is why I continued building SafarSafe. I wanted to create something that could help people make safer decisions before they even begin their journey.
For me, this is much more than a startup. It's something I genuinely want to dedicate myself to because every woman deserves to travel without constantly worrying about whether she'll reach home safely.
2. Unlike many safety apps that focus on emergency response, SafarSafe aims to prevent risks before a journey begins. How does your AI-powered platform assess route safety, and what makes this approach unique?
Most safety apps become useful when you're already in danger. We wanted to ask a different question: Can technology help reduce the chances of reaching that situation at all?
SafarSafe analyses different factors like CCTV coverage in the area you will be travelling through, crime trends, time of day, lighting, crowd activity and community reports to estimate how safe different routes may be. Instead of only showing the fastest route, we want people to also see the safer option and decide for themselves.
But for me, the biggest difference isn't just the technology.
I don't just want to build another app. I want to build a community where women help other women by sharing real experiences, reporting unsafe places and contributing to safer journeys for everyone else. Technology is important, but communities make cities safer too.
3. You conducted on-ground surveys with women commuters and filed RTI applications to access public safety data. What were some of the most surprising insights you uncovered, and how have they shaped the platform?
Talking to women directly changed the way I looked at this problem.
One thing I heard repeatedly was that many women don't mind taking a route that is ten or fifteen minutes longer if they feel safer. That really stayed with me because most navigation apps only optimise for speed.
The RTIs also opened my eyes. The data we received was in paper form, which made it much more difficult to use in a structured way. We had to manually go through and digitise it, and we've been able to organise around 80 percent of it so far. Some of it is still left, but that work is in progress and will be completed very soon. It made us realise even more clearly that solving this problem requires bringing together information from multiple sources rather than depending on one dataset.
We've also tested SafarSafe with many people already, and their feedback has helped us improve the product significantly. The next round of testing is currently in development, and we're very close to launching it. Every test teaches us something new because the people using it ultimately shape the platform.
4. Building a startup while pursuing a full-time Mathematics degree is no small feat. How have you balanced academics with entrepreneurship, and what have been the biggest challenges along the way?
Honestly, it has been difficult.
There are days when I attend classes, complete assignments, prepare for exams and then spend the rest of my day working on SafarSafe. Sometimes that means very little sleep, but when you genuinely believe in something, you find the energy to keep going.
I'm just a 20-year-old college student trying to solve a problem that is much bigger than me. There are moments when it feels overwhelming, especially when it comes to funding, building technology and managing everything alongside academics.
But every positive message from someone who believes in what we're building reminds me why I started. Those moments make the hard days worth it.
5. SafarSafe has already reached over 150,000 people organically and won multiple startup competitions. What do these early milestones tell you about the growing demand for technology-driven safety solutions?
The biggest takeaway is that people genuinely care.
Reaching over 150,000 people organically through social media tells me that conversations around women's safety matter to people. Winning startup competitions at places like Hansraj, University of Delhi and MAIMS,IP University, and being selected among the top 80 teams at IIT Bombay, gave us early validation that preventive safety technology is something people are willing to engage with and take seriously.
At the same time, these milestones don't mean we've solved anything yet.
We're still learning. We're still building. We're still testing.
If anything, these experiences have increased our responsibility to create something that actually makes a difference in people's everyday lives instead of becoming just another app.
6. Women's safety is a shared responsibility involving citizens, technology providers, and policymakers. How do you see startups like SafarSafe collaborating with governments, law enforcement agencies, and urban planners to create safer cities?
No startup can solve women's safety alone.
This requires governments, police, urban planners, citizens and technology companies all working together.
My hope is that SafarSafe can become a bridge between technology and real-world decision making. Whether it's using public data responsibly, helping identify areas that need better infrastructure or encouraging communities to report unsafe locations, collaboration is the only way forward.
As founders, we can build technology. But making cities safer requires everyone to participate.
We are also actively thinking about adding a community-driven safety feature, where if a user feels uncomfortable during a journey, they can trigger a signal that alerts other SafarSafe users within a certain radius. The idea is that safety should not just be individuality should be collective, where people can look out for each other in real time.
Beyond that, there are many more potential features we can explore as we grow. We haven't fully mapped them out yet, but we see SafarSafe evolving into a much larger safety ecosystem over time.
We also see strong potential in collaborating with mobility platforms like Uber and Rapido in the future. Integrating safety insights into everyday rides could make daily travel significantly safer for millions of people, and that is something we would love to work towards as we scale.
7. Looking ahead, what is your long-term vision for SafarSafe? Are there plans to expand beyond route safety into other areas of urban mobility, public safety, or smart city solutions?
Right now, our complete focus is building the best possible route safety platform and launching it properly.
In the future, I want SafarSafe to become much more than an app. I want it to become a trusted safety community where people actively help one another and where technology, data and community support work together.
We're currently in the final stages of developing our next version, and I'm genuinely excited for more people to test it. Every piece of feedback helps us improve.
I'd also like to use this opportunity to ask for support.
If you're reading this, I'd love for you to join our testing programme when it opens, use the app, tell us what works and what doesn't, and help us build something that can genuinely make a difference.
We're also looking for mentors, partners and funding to help us scale this mission. At the end of the day, this isn't just my dream. It started with a small team, grew through different experiences and mentors, and now continues with full responsibility on my shoulders. If we want safer cities for women, it's something all of us have to build together.
