Hello!

My name is E-J and I’m the co-founder of Epowar. We are building a smartwatch/wearable app that reacts automatically if the user is attacked, instantly alerting relevant parties, sounding an alarm and storing evidence.

I thought I’d use this initial blogpost as an opportunity to explain our story and our mission.

I first had the idea for Epowar about two and a half years ago. I was living off campus for the first time, so was I was walking everywhere, sometimes in the dark. I remember that at the same time, people were sharing these warnings all over campus social media pages about a man who was following girls home, or knocking on their doors to flash them (or worse…) - in the area where I lived! I was petrified to walk (or even be) home alone.

Every day, millions of young women walk to and from work, university, the gym, a bar, a friend’s house, the train station, their bus stop etc. And, every day, thousands of these women are subjected to rape, or public violence. Globally, 736 million women (almost one in three) have experienced physical and/or sexual violence at least once in their life. 1 in 4 adult women are raped/physically assaulted in the UK, and in the US it is 1 in 6 (33% of which took place while the victim was walking alone).

Unfortunately, walking alone is often the only option for travel, especially when living in a city. The result? Most women make these journeys feeling afraid and vulnerable, if not avoiding them at all. According to ONS, 81% of adult women feel afraid to walk alone in the dark.

At the time, my mom actually sent me a rape alarm in the post. I carried it around with me but I was worried that if I was attacked I would drop it, or wouldn’t have both hands accessible to pull the string out. To my frustration, I could not find an effective solution. The existing safety products all needed to be manually activated by the user - even though, in the event of an attack, it is almost impossible to pull out a rape alarm or unlock your phone to press a panic button!

So, when I saw that Apple were using smartwatches to detect heart attacks, something just clicked. I teamed up with Maks Rahman (who has been the most incredible technical co-founder) and since then we’ve been building the first product that can instantly, automatically and accurately detect a physical attack, responding straightaway.

We care deeply about the problem we’re trying to solve and, thanks to the alumni innovation award, I’ve been able to work on it full-time since graduating, which is the biggest privilege.

#1 - Revolutionising safety