PYFT
A device that protects Kazakhstan citizens from theft and other crimes by connecting with the nearest police stations.
We are trying to solve the problem of petty theft in Kazakhstan. In 2020, in our country, over 76,000 petty thefts were reported. While there was a significant decrease from 192,000 cases in 2017, primarily due to the pandemic, it's still the country's most popular type of crime (Ministry of Internal Affairs in Kazakhstan, 2021). Pickpocketing and purse snatching are examples of petty crimes that frequently happen, especially in metropolitan areas like Almaty, which has one of the highest rates of street crime in Central Asia.
Not only are the high level of petty thefts a problem, but there is also less frequency of reporting and solving them. For instance, in 2020, only 45% of all reported thefts were solved (Ministry of Internal Affairs in Kazakhstan, 2021). Thus, we aim to decrease the theft rate and increase the frequency of finding robbers by cooperating with police officers.
Our device is an app and chip system. The chip containing GPS Module is put into a valuable item such as a bag or purse, and in the case of robbery, the person opens the app to check the geolocation and sends this data to the nearest police station. We prototyped the app in MIT App Inventor and chip in Arduino Nano.
While our primary focus is addressing the social problem, this system can also be applied to lost items, including bags, clothes, and other valuable things.
Our target population is vulnerable groups in Kazakstan. In other words, groups that are more likely to be a victim of petty theft, including (1) pregnant women, (2) women with children, (3) school children, (4) people with physical disabilities, (5) tourists as they might not able to run after the robber and return their items due to physical or communication limitations. Using our device, they can easily connect with the police station and get help and track their item through the GPS.
Though we’ve been developing the idea and prototypes for a while, our team consists of only three members since we want a tight-knit community to cooperate more at the start. One of our team members, Ayazhan, and I have four years of experience in programming, including learning several programming languages, and we’re planning to major in Computer Science at university. Moreover, I successfully presented our system in several business competitions, such as Tumaris.Tech Central Asian incubation program and Iowa State I-Fit challenge, as we were selected from over 100 teams in each.
This idea came to me when I was visiting several cities in Kazakhstan and saw how people from rural areas struggled to go through dark alleys as if something terrible could happen to them. I totally understand them, as when I was visiting Almaty in January 2020, 2 men approached me, and I felt very uncomfortable. Fortunately, I called my dad and shared where I was.
We’re not stopping from improving our robotics (Arduino) and programming skills as we’re looking forward to developing this project further and contributing to the safety of our citizens.
We interviewed 66 locals who were theft victims, thefts ranging from the street to muggings and burglaries. During our Customer Development interviews, we found that people usually didn’t get their items back. On average, it cost $102, a significant amount for Kazakhstan citizens with an average salary of $687 per month. Moreover, only 31% of people reported to the police and gave a reason for not believing it to be effective. Almost all individuals said they would want to be supported in such an overwhelming moment.
- Other: Addressing an unmet social, environmental, or economic need not covered in the four dimensions above.
- Prototype: A venture or organization building and testing its product, service, or business model
It will enable us to broaden the positive impact of technology in our country. It's innovative in the way it will be the first app/system that includes collaboration with Kazakstan's police officers. This cooperation will increase the credibility of the police in citizens' eyes and strengthen their trust. It may also affect people to report theft cases and thus rely on the government sector.
We’re aiming to help people to be able to return their valuable goods in a short period without any danger to their lives and increase the productivity of the national police. Next year, we’re planning to increase the number of reported theft (since many of them are not reported in the past years) and raise the percentage of finding robbers from 45% to 70-80%.
Our core technology is the app and GPS module. Currently, we’re developing them in MIT App inventor and an Arduino Nano.
- Robotics and Drones
- Software and Mobile Applications
- Kazakhstan
We plan to serve approximately 50,000 people in the next year. In Kazakhstan, there are 19,500,000 people, of which 13 million are adults. Since 70,000 were affected by theft in the reported data, we want to cover 70% or 0.3% of all potential adult customers.
We need initial funding to test prototypes to determine the lowest-cost production and more computer engineers.
We’re developing a prototype at Nazarbayev University Research and Innovation System Fabrication Laboratory in Astana, Kazakhstan. Also, we’re getting help from successful founders at Tumaris.Tech Incubation Program.
We plan to serve approximately 50,000 people in the next year. In Kazakhstan, there are 19,500,000 people, of which 13 million are adults. Since 70,000 were affected by theft in the reported data, we want to cover 70% or 0.3% of all potential adult customers.
Our project is created to serve citizens. Thus we expect nearly zero income, but we also need to cover all costs, including chip development and keep the app updated and fully developed. We’ll participate in programs with pre-seed opportunities and get support from the government since we’ll closely collaborate with them.