With so many apps, covering everything from deliveries, news content, social media, gaming, and the weather, it’s almost a breath of fresh air to find an app that targets safety and social connectedness in one simple form.
Tech savvy entrepreneur Kathleen Kenny came up with the concept for tribesta whilst driving to pick up her daughter from school. After witnessing the aftermath of a car accident, which had left a poor woman trapped in her car, Kathleen thought, “What if that was me?”
The thought of an unfortunate incident suddenly occurring got Kathleen thinking. How would the first respondents at a scene know that her daughter was waiting to be picked up, that she had pets confined in the house, and that her husband was currently on a business trip?
“Following that incident a short time later another series of events took place,” Kathleen tells Dynamic Business. “My mother in law suffers from dementia and was beginning to wander and jump on buses, in taxis, etc. On one occasion, she took a 4-hour train trip to country NSW, Orange, and was missing for 2 days not knowing where she was or who she was.”
It wasn’t long before tribesta was born.
Marketed as a “social safety app”, this free app allows users to link up to 8 members of their ‘tribe’ in a personal network. With the simple touch of a button, users can notify tribe members of their GPS location and that they are okay, ask them to “watch you” as they walk home, and let the 8 members in their tribe know that they feel uncomfortable, providing their GPS location to them and requesting immediate assistance.
Perhaps most importantly, the app provides users with a simple way to escalate a call to 000. In case of a critical situation, a single push of a button in tribesta will provide the user’s GPS location and critical data overview to emergency services.
“Tribesta gives consumers the ability to live their lives having peace of mind knowing they have their backs covered should anything ever happen to them. Tribesta is purely an ‘opt in’ service offering consumers choices about who is in their tribe, who receives their alerts or information in an emergency situation,” Kathleen says.
“The app is the starting point, however, you can be linked or identified via your mobile number, drivers licence, vehicle registration plates, Medicare (or foreign equivalent), passport number, even an event participation ticketing number such as a concert or sporting event like the City 2 Surf or the Boston Marathon.”
Up until early 2014, Kathleen had been personally funding the project’s five-year journey. It wasn’t until securing exclusive agreements with Crime Stoppers and receiving support from Triple Zero that Kathleen says the project gathered itself credibility. Although she had received offers from investors prior, Kathleen decided to hold out in order to find the right type of support.
“I’ve had some wonderful investment offers over the past few years, but I quickly realised they weren’t the right mix and decided to seek investors who were passionate about our vision of world safety and wanted to share our bigger picture dreams,” Kathleen says.
“Luckily, we’ve chosen our investors well and have a great bunch of people involved in the business today. First quarter 2015 will see us undertake our third round of funding.”
While tribesta is available for free, Kathleen says revenue is earned via licence fees from corporates who have a duty of care to their employees, members or volunteers. The NRMA is one such corporation, looking at using tribesta’s services for their membership and employees.
“The NRMA are pro-actively looking for new exciting benefits for their member-base. Should an NRMA member need roadside assistance, very soon they’ll be able to tap a button on the tribesta app to request service, share their GPS location, and see how long and far away the serviceman is without having to make a phone call,” Kathleen explains.
Tribesta’s growth in the last 12 months has been moving in leaps and bounds, and there’s no sign of slowing down.
“We have some really exciting new enhancements to our product suite that will be launched in 2015,” Kathleen says. “We’ve already had many enquiries from Law Enforcement Agencies in the US who want to roll our product out asap, along with the UK, Canada and New Zealand.”
Tribesta is certainly gaining ground as a success story in the world of apps, but Kathleen says it hasn’t been easy.
“I’ve experienced every difficulty you could imagine and more. If it were easy to come up with a new idea, support yourself financially throughout the years of development, personally fund the project and then find other people who believe in your dream and secure funding, everyone would be doing it,” Kathleen says, but clarifies that she wouldn’t have it any other way.
“I’m passionate about tribesta and giving other people the opportunity of connecting with their loved ones every day, especially in a crisis.”
The tech industry sees innovation every day, but it is projects like tribesta that push a socially aware value.
Kathleen sums it up best. “We believe tribesta will make the world a safer place through the use of technology.”
