Every year, the crime stats get worse. Murder, rape, hijackings and robberies seem to occur on a daily basis, with the most vulnerable being women and children.
This is what inspired Sibusiso Mbhele.
“When we saw Michelle Obama shouting on TV ‘Bring back our girls’ we knew we were in trouble,” the co-founder and executive director of Eyerus recalls.
On the night of 15 April 2014, 276 mostly Christian female students aged from 16 to 18 were kidnapped by the Islamic terrorist group Boko Haram from the Government Girls Secondary School at the town of Chibok in Borno State, Nigeria.
“We were very worried as brothers and fathers as to what we would do if this had to happen within our own shores. Coupled with the horrendous social ills of contact crime such as GBV, we knew we had to do something in form of an automated algorithm such as an app.”
He and his partners then did a market validation to find out why perpetrators are not behind bars and still moving from one victim to the next.
Read more | An app to guide blind users, plus more tech to download if you or someone you know has a disability
“Our survey told us that most victims do not report the matter to the police due to the lack of evidence. We knew when we created Eyerus that this had to be a very strong feature which would be admissible in a court of law as the evidence collected has untapped meter evidence produced has time stamps, locations stamps and date stamps.”
Eyerus in a nutshell enables you to indicate how safe or unsafe you feel in your current surroundings using four safety status modes. The safety alert modes are green (safe and sound), amber (live audio stream), Red (live video streaming) and blue (armed emergency personnel and private armed services dispatched). All evidence captured is instantly stored on a secure cloud as well as live streamed to your guardians in real time.
“Using features like the check in system, Eyerus will automatically detect if you’ve been drugged, unconscious or restrained. You literally don’t have to do anything, Eyerus will handle the situation on your behalf.”
Read more | Survivor 2019 winner Rob Bentele develops anti-GBV app
As philanthropists they initially did not know what it takes to create an app. “We thought it was going to be just a once off transaction and this time, we were faced with just little bit more than that as apps of this nature has to be constantly operational to save people’s lives.”
Eyerus took just under two years to develop the first version. The app has since undergone various updates of its features.
“These updates are the improvements that we do on the app to keep up with the market needs. We will soon be releasing in the next update a new safety button and other functionalities such as jog safe mode and travel safe mode.”
All this tweaking has borne fruit as Eyerus was bestowed the honour of being awarded during the 2022 MTN Business App of the Year awards, where they snatched up the title for The Best South African solution category.
This year also saw more accolades trickle in. “We also managed to scoop The Most Innovative Solution award from the 2023 MTN Business App of the Year awards and then the innovation award 2023 at the Africa’s Travel Indaba voted by travel agencies as the most trusted.”
These honours have also seen the app gain some much needed attention from government.
“We have presented to various government departments at all spheres from national, provincial and local. They’ve shown great interest as the app greatly adds efforts to curbing crime against humanity. Due to government processes, they have unfortunately not been able to fully utilise the app to its best potential.”
This app has resulted in an array of success stories in which the safety features were able to help a user out of what could have been a dangerous situation.
“The strength of the app lies in its ability to collect evidence. We have had various requests from subscribers, requesting for evidence through a court judgement process. Some cases are in court pending finalization.
“We have also been able to assist people in accidents through our blue alert mode which also calls for private ambulance services as well as private armed security,” he says.
"One of the most challenging aspects of this venture has been the huge demand of cash flow. We have had to build the app from our pockets without any assistance from corporate or government. It’s really been quite a pricey journey, however, we keep soldiering on. Another challenge is the cost of data that South Africans have to endure and therefore having a negative take up on the app, we hope one day the networks come on board and assist with zero-rating the app as it’s not for social use but human safety."
When reports of this application first surfaced a few years ago, Rob Bentele, known for being the winner of Survivor South Africa season seven, was attached to the brand but this partnership has since come to pass according to Sibusiso.
The future, however, remains bright for the app.
“Eyerus is available for white labelling, meaning we can completely customise it in any organisations look and feel, therefore making it completely theirs. This is attractive to large organisations who purchase the app for their employees as an employee benefit as well as insurance companies who on-sell it to their clients as a value-added product.”
Eyerus is also highly scalable and is a plug and play anywhere in the world. They are currently having conversations with countries in the SADC region, and Middle East Africa, India, United Kingdom as well as Mexico to expand Eyerus as they have similar challenges in those countries.
An empire might be brewing but one aimed at curbing genuine issues while also generating a healthy revenue for Sibusiso and his GreenEye consortium. The idea is to have more apps of this nature to combat contact crime.
