TechM’s ‘Dial 100’ system proves a hit in UP

Tech Mahindra’s police emergency response management system — UP Dial 100 — for the 220 million citizens of Uttar Pradesh, has saved 460 lives in the past three months and a total of 800 lives since November, the company said.

The project is jointly implemented by Tech Mahindra and Mahindra Defence Systems.

The company claims this is the world’s largest integrated emergency response management platform and is unique in that the citizen response call centre at Lucknow is manned by an all-women team of 400, who receive 100,000 calls every day, 98 per cent of which are responded to in five seconds.

The languages supported are eight local dialects, 18 national languages and 16 foreign languages.

“Usually, police are concentrated at district headquarters; therefore, people in remote villages face huge issues with safety, especially women,” Sujit Baksi, President, India Business, Tech Mahindra, told BusinessLine .

“The Emergency Response Management System went live in September last year and helps people across 2,40,948 sq km in 75 districts, 689 cities and towns, 1,07,452 villages, and 1,530 police stations. Of the one lakh calls received by our team daily, 15,000 are of dire distress and the rest are for loss of passport, vehicles and so on.”

He explained that when a person in distress dials 100, the exact location of the caller is identified immediately, and the police station within the jurisdiction of the location of the call is intimated and action taken within 15 minutes.

A GPS system identifies the nearest location of the Police Emergency Response vehicle and the police are able to reach the caller within 15 minutes.

The convenience of lodging an FIR on the spot is also provided. Citizens can also access police help through social media platforms such as Facebook, Twitter and Whatsapp.

“Unlike most other call centres where call time is limited, we encourage our team to engage with the caller till the police arrives on the scene. All calls are recorded for accuracy and transparency; provisions for communicating with persons with special needs have been made and crime data analytics are generated for the police to take proactive action. We have saved 800 lives, majority are women,” Baksi said.

Two more all-women call centres are being set up in Allahabad and Noida. On why they chose to have an all-women team, Baksi said: “Women are far more empathetic to people in distress.”

Tech Mahindra on July 25 also set up a Tech Support Centre for the Central Government at Noida, manned by 400 chartered accountants and commerce graduates, to help with GST registration and filing tax returns online.

“At present, the India business contributes just 3 per cent to our turnover. The aim is to take it to 10 per cent in the next three years” said Baksi. Tech Mahindra notched up revenues of ₹29,141 crore in FY2017, a 10 per cent growth over the previous year.

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