Shohoz’s crowning glory
Corona Tracer BD, a contact tracing software that warns users if they're near somebody who tested positive for the coronavirus, is off to a good start as folks are increasingly downloading the solution to keep carefully the contagion at bay.
"The app has been downloaded a lot more than 3 lakh times by yesterday," said Maliha M Quadir, founder and managing director of Shohoz, which developed the application for the government.
"Atlanta divorce attorneys second, one download is being made."
A team of Shohoz worked round-the-clock to develop the app within a short while in a testament to the growing prowess of the Bangladeshi technology start-up in creating a large-scale technology tool.
"The technology is an extremely complicated one. We, as a start-up, are extremely happy and feel proud to serve the united states in this pandemic," she added.
Under an initiative of the ICT Division, the Directorate General of Health Services, the Institute of Epidemiology, Disease Control and Research, the Usage of Information (a2i) programme, the Skill Development for Mobile Game and Application project and Shohoz worked closely to build up the app.
Shohoz was in charge of providing the core technical solutions, as the contents were produced by other partners.
On June 4, the ICT Division released the beta version of the iphone app to flatten the curve on the rogue pathogen.
To avail the service, smartphone users need to download the iphone app from https://bit.ly/coronatracerbd. Users need to register by entering their mobile number. The device's Bluetooth and location options need to be switched on.
The app utilises Bluetooth and the most recent technology to notify at-risk users by detecting the contact with a Covid-19 positive user. The data collected is kept secure in-transit via encryption.
"If any user comes into the vicinity of a Covid-19 positive user, within some time and distance threshold, an individual is automatically made aware of the potential risk and what they must do if exposed," Maliha told The Daily Star in an interview on Sunday.
"The app gets the potential to become just about the most effective tools to check, trace and contain the virus."
It all commenced after Shohoz board members surviving in various countries informed Maliha about the technology the nations have employed to fight the Covid-19.
"As we have an extremely skillful engineering team, I was thinking whether we can develop any such thing."
At that time, the government was looking for a platform to come up with a remedy as the contagion is spreading extremely fast.
"A few companies were vying for the work. We gave a complete presentation with many aspects and got selected for this," Maliha said.
For the merchandise, everything, from meetings to software development, was done digitally. Meetings were completed through the cloud-based video communications iphone app of Zoom Video Communications.
Her engineers used Microsoft Teams software to permit them to develop it while working at home as a result of the social-distancing measures devote destination to stop the spread of the virus.
Some Zoom calls would start at 11 pm and last until 2 am to 3 am. Government officials, who've been working at any hour to help the united states fight the pandemic, also attended the late-night calls.
"What Zunaid Ahmed Palak, state minister for ICT, did amazed me. Every week, he would conduct numerous video-conferencing with officials of several organisations," Maliha said.
Working at home saved time and increased efficiency as physical meetings often get delayed, the entrepreneur said.
The app would be able to include all smartphone users in Bangladesh simultaneously and people should make utilization of it from their own sense of responsibility to flatten the curve, she said.
"It will inform people how much they are in risk and when they is going for isolation," she said, discussing World Health Organisation's frequent advice and importance on testing, tracing and isolation.
The app will be particularly helpful in big cities, where most of the persons use smartphones but contract-tracing is quite difficult because they don't know each other very much.
The technology, that was used to build up the app, used Bluetooth low-energy signal between phones and fine-tuned signal strength and contact duration to recognize legitimate contacts according to WHO's guideline.
The app's backend has been built using asynchronous queue-backed scalable microservices and an extremely performant NoSQL storage solution.
These highly-decoupled microservices are containerised and so could be deployed and scaled up individually based on request/data throughput that guarantees availability at a high-scale and minimises infrastructure cost.
The app does not need internet connectivity to be available on phones on a regular basis and uses low bandwidth for communication with backend servers. It is highly energy-efficient.
Harvard Business School-graduate Maliha worked at top institutions such Morgan Stanley, Standard Chartered and Nokia before founding Shohoz, a platform where one can buy tickets for bus and launch trips, events and movies, in 2014.
In 2018, Shohoz made foray into the ride-hailing market. In the same year, the business announced it raised $15 million from Golden Gate Ventures of Singapore and others to expand.
The company added truck to its ride-hailing service and food delivery this past year.
"I had a dream that 1 day we would reach everyone in the country with this service, and with this app, I am hoping we would achieve a whole lot of our dream."
The seed for the company was sowed a long time ago when her mother, who was a high official at state-run Jibon Bima Corporation, handed her a magazine named Real Simple.
The magazine shows how people could make their everyday life simple.
"So, when I needed to form a new venture in Bangladesh, I gave the name Shohoz, which means simple."
