Daak: The social application

Aminah Alavee Hossain is the co founder of the social mobile application “Daak”. She is a seasoned digital executive and strategist, an expert in business communications, operational management, and product. Recently SD Asia had the opportunity to talk to her.
How did you get the idea of mobile application “Daak”?
In late 2012, our team worked in few IT associated projects such as working as a mentor at the first Hackathon (Sanitation Hackathon) under World Bank (WB), Researcher at Promoting Child rights through Informa-tion and Communication Technology (ICT), Digital Bangladesh, Enterprise Resource Planning(ERP) prospects etc. There we came across many vivid ideas. The solutions were good but there was no one to take those ideas to the next level. What was disheartening to us was that only 40-50 per cent ideas came to fruition while the rest went into oblivion. Such rampant losses of ideas lead Zamilur Rashid (managing director) to think of his own venture: RITL.
Our initial goal was to resolve developing sectors problems through ICT. However, now we serve all kinds of clients from corporate to international. When we performed further research we discovered that in 2013, 6,175 Bangladeshi lives were cut short due to road accidents and murders, while 19,601 women and children were harassed in some way. If we add burns, drowning, assaults and falls, the numbers are even higher. Injuries are global public health problems: according to World Health Organisation (WHO), 5.2 million people die each year as a result of injuries. These account for 9 per cent of the world’s deaths, nearly 1.7 times the number of fatalities that result from HIV/AIDS, tuberculosis and malaria combined. And this led to the birth of Daak. So that our team could help reduce this number in the coming years, helping Bangla-desh become a safe and secured place for people to live in.
How can “Daak” create an effect in the society? What does the application do?                             
In many cases, Daak can actually prevent violence- or accident-related incident from happening in the first place, curbing a major cause of mortality and morbidity. This means people can lead more productive, safer lives. The right people are able to respond to an emergency in the shortest possible time. Daak is available to anyone in the community who is concerned about safety, and with our partnership with law enforcement, can be used by police as well. Being able to provide live location and situation updates means the time between the incident and the response is greatly reduced.
You have worked as a programmer and application analyst to a fashion designer, what was your experience while working in so many different fields?
I have been in the service sector for over 10 years and in these years I have grown as a better communicator, better listener, and I am working towards becoming an effective leader. I have learned the diversity of work and skills and which led me to be more creative and dynamic. In terms of experience, I have experience in managing multimillion-dollar projects, aligning business goals with technology solutions to drive process improvements, competitive advantage and bottom-line gains.

One can obtain more information by visiting http://sdasia.co/ or https://www.facebook.com/SDAsia.co

Daak: The social application

Aminah Alavee Hossain is the co founder of the social mobile application Daak. She is a seasoned digital executive and strategist, an expert in business communications, operational management, and product. Recently SD Asia had the opportunity to talk to her. How did you get the idea of mobile application Daak? In late 2012, our team worked in few IT associated projects such as working as a mentor at the first Hackathon (Sanitation Hackathon) under World Bank (WB), Researcher at Promoting Child rights through Informa-tion and Communication Technology (ICT), Digital Bangladesh, Enterprise Resource Planning(ERP) prospects etc. There we came across many vivid ideas. The solutions were good but there was no one to take those ideas to the next level. What was disheartening to us was that only 40-50 per cent ideas came to fruition while the rest went into oblivion. Such rampant losses of ideas lead Zamilur Rashid (managing director) to think of his own venture: RITL. Our initial goal was to resolve developing sectors problems through ICT. However, now we serve all kinds of clients from corporate to international. When we performed further research we discovered that in 2013, 6,175 Bangladeshi lives were cut short due to road accidents and murders, while 19,601 women and children were harassed in some way. If we add burns, drowning, assaults and falls, the numbers are even higher. Injuries are global public health problems: according to World Health Organisation (WHO), 5.2 million people die each year as a result of injuries. These account for 9 per cent of the worlds deaths, nearly 1.7 times the number of fatalities that result from HIV/AIDS, tuberculosis and malaria combined. And this led to the birth of Daak. So that our team could help reduce this number in the coming years, helping Bangla-desh become a safe and secured place for people to live in. How can Daak create an effect in the society? What does the application do? In many cases, Daak can actually prevent violence- or accident-related incident from happening in the first place, curbing a major cause of mortality and morbidity. This means people can lead more productive, safer lives. The right people are able to respond to an emergency in the shortest possible time. Daak is available to anyone in the community who is concerned about safety, and with our partnership with law enforcement, can be used by police as well. Being able to provide live location and situation updates means the time between the incident and the response is greatly reduced. You have worked as a programmer and application analyst to a fashion designer, what was your experience while working in so many different fields? I have been in the service sector for over 10 years and in these years I have grown as a better communicator, better listener, and I am working towards becoming an effective leader. I have learned the diversity of work and skills and which led me to be more creative and dynamic. In terms of experience, I have experience in managing multimillion-dollar projects, aligning business goals with technology solutions to drive process improvements, competitive advantage and bottom-line gains. One can obtain more information by visiting http://sdasia.co/ or https://www.facebook.com/SDAsia.co