Pune Inc: City startup launches device to keep children safe from internet’s dark edges

Singh started interacting with other parents on the issue and came to know of incidents in her inner circle in which a child’s safety and well-being were threatened. In one case, an eight-year-old on a gaming website had been influenced to send compromising pictures of himself to a stranger.

After working on it for a year, Singh launched Happy Parents Lab, a startup that has built an innovative technology called Happinetz, which filters out age-inappropriate content and phishing attacks, among others.

Singh is the CEO and Vikas Agarwal is the COO of the bootstrapped company.

“The first problem we faced was the deployment of the technology. We had to decide what kind of devices and browsers our technology would work on with minimum intervention required from parents. A good deal of the tech has gone into ensuring that Happinetz works with all kinds of routers, ISPs, devices and browsers. It works with smart TVs, all kinds of phones, laptops, desktops, and tablets. Parents do not have to change anything in their household ecosystem for compatibility with the box,” says Singh.

Happinetz comes in the form of a box that can be connected to the router at home. A parent can filter out age-inappropriate content through a Happinetz app on their phone, and keep a check on the internet screen time and browsing activity of their children.

The device was launched on July 31.

“The response has been good from consumers and industries. The internet has been a polarising factor for kids all around. You cannot take it away completely. The Happinetz box is one of the first few steps that we will take in building a safe internet for children,” says Singh.

She adds when the team tested by searching for pornography on a device connected to Happinetz, they got results like news articles of people who have watched porn in inappropriate places and landed in trouble, including arrests.

Several tools are available for parents at present, and among them are Google’s Family Link, Microsoft’s Family Safety as well as third-party apps. Most of these systems are highly effective but are limited in their reach — Google’s Family Link supervision can run on Android devices but not iPhones, iPads, and computers (except Chromebooks).

The use of artificial intelligence and machine learning helps make the selection between good and bad websites. “We are continuously tracking 100 million websites, of which we have managed to block 22 million,” she says.

Gaming, for instance, is completely blocked on Kid Mode except for 50 games that have been specially curated. “We will continue adding more games to it, but they need to be vetted by our teams,” she adds.

In her TedTalk, Singh has spoken about social media being an opportunity to “evoke drawing room conversations and brainstorming sessions”. She stresses the need to move on from looking out for instant gratification to using social media as a means of self-development and growth.

As Happinetz draws interest from consumers, Singh says there is no extreme stand on the internet, “but it has to be dealt with in the right way”. “A child can always watch kid-appropriate content,” she adds.