These Apps Sensitize You About Rising Pollution Deprecated situation compelled entrepreneurs to help curb menace by creating apps that apprise about pollution level

Air Cognizer

This app has been conceptualized and developed by two students of Bharti Vidyapeeth in Delhi. The creators, Prerna Khanna and Tanmay Srivastava also won a cash prize of $1500 (Rs 1,09,500) last month at the Marconi Society Awards organized in India. The real-time air quality analytics app lets users take a photo (half of it should have the sky) and using image processing techniques the app will give them details about the air quality in the area. "These image features are chosen to match with the human perception of colour and texture of the sky. Further, machine learning techniques are applied to estimate the air quality index (AQI) of the image captured by the user. To increase our accuracy we even combine meteorological features like humidity," says Khanna.

Airveda

After living in the US for 13 years, Namita Gupta decided to return to Delhi in 2013. Except that trouble awaited the asthma patient back home. In 2014, Delhi was declared the most polluted city in the world. It was then, Gupta decided to take matters into her own hands. She and her team developed the Airveda app which comes with air quality monitors, that gives you an analysis of the air you are breathing in. It provides accurate and real-time air quality index (AQI) from locations across the globe. So you can even know how pollution levels in your city compare with global figures.

Kaiterra

It started its operations in China, capturing data from the notorious air of its bustling capital, Beijing. It made inroads into India soon after. Kaiterra is a technology company committed to creating high accuracy air quality monitors for consumers, businesses, and industrial use that are driven by real-time data to help people build and sustain a healthy lifestyle. In 2016, the firm launched Laser Egg app. With its grand success, Apple too began selling it at its 29 stores in China. Nita Soans, CEO-India for Kaiterra says that they have customers in more than 75 cities and towns in India. "When the Laser Egg was launched, it was the first smart indoor air quality monitoring app that was affordable. All Kaiterra air quality monitors pair with an app on iOS and Android and allows one to monitor the air in their home from wherever they are," she says.

(This article was first published in the December issue of Entrepreneur Magazine. To subscribe, click here)