Since independence, India has advanced rapidly in all spheres of life. While the world’s biggest democracy has succeeded on many fronts, it has failed to provide one of the most fundamental tenets of society – Equality to Women.

It’s tough to be a woman in India. The atrocities they face take many forms. While some are well-documented, others like mobile harassment fail to get the attention it deserves. Even though millions are subjected to this form of sexual harassment every single day.

But in 2017, when several retailers were caught selling women’s phone numbers, a probe revealed the actual scale of mobile harassment. This immoral trade of private numbers further armed sexual predators who could now haunt women, even in the privacy of their homes.

The problem was rooted in the standard top-up process in India, which required subscribers to share their mobile numbers with retailers.

To restore every Indian woman’s right to enjoy life that’s free and without fear, Vodafone launched an innovative service called Sakhi. With this service, women could actually carry out a top-up without revealing their numbers. This eliminates the risk of the woman’s number falling in wrong hands, and assures complete protection from mobile harassment.

Our idea was to turn a text message into a powerful tool to fight sexual harassment.

Research had revealed that the problem was rooted in the top-up process of calling-cards. Since 93% of India’s one billion subscribers use calling-cards, telecom companies devised a simple process that allowed subscribers to get their top-ups anywhere. By simply sharing their mobile numbers with retailers, subscribers could get top-ups at every neighbourhood store.

For the safety of women, Vodafone took this step out of the equation with Vodafone Sakhi – a simple text-based private top-up service. With Sakhi, women subscribers could simply text “Private” to 12604 and receive a machine-generated 10-digit number.

At the time of a top-up, this number could be shared instead of their mobile number. After the top-up is done, this number can’t be traced back to the subscriber. Thus ensuring that the subscriber’s mobile number never falls into wrong hands.

In India, subscribers who need a top-up for their calling-cards follow this simple process– go to any neighbourhood store, choose a top-up amount, and share their mobile number with the shopkeeper for the processing. This step gave the retailers unwarranted access to mobile numbers of all the subscribers who came there for a top-up.

Vodafone Sakhi was able to successfully hide the phone number of subscribers during a top-up. When a woman subscriber would text “Private” to 12604, she would receive a machine-generated 10-digit number. This number worked like an OTP (one-time password) and could be shared with the retailer instead of her mobile number.

However, unknown to the retailer, this number would cease to exist on the completion of the top-up. So even if the number was later leaked, it could not be traced back to the woman subscriber. Thus assuring her complete privacy.

Vodafone Sakhi was launched in 2017. With the help of our discreet promotion strategy, we could reach out to as many as 400000 subscribers in India, who now turn to Vodafone Sakhi every time they need a top-up. As their number remains completely protected from falling into wrong hands, women go about their top-ups without any fear. When Sakhi expands to cover the whole country by the end of 2018, it will then be available to over 35 million women who use Vodafone’s calling-cards. By offering hope of complete privacy, Vodafone Sakhi becomes a trusted friend and a powerful ally to all women, helping them live free and fearless.

Sexual harassment remains a taboo subject in the conservative sections of India, and is never spoken about openly. As a result, victims of mobile harassment would feel very uncomfortable to even discuss it, let alone complain to authorities.

It was imperative for us to reach women one-on-one and educate them about Vodafone Sakhi. So we stayed away from mass media and instead turned to women-only touch-points.

We organised health camps for women where trained volunteers became counsellors and spokespersons for Sakhi. Then at beauty shops that stocked women's accessories like bangles, wrapping paper doubled up as flyers and proved to be an excellent touch-point for discreet communication with our target group.

With our innovative mix of mobile technology, direct communication and retail media, the smartphone went from being a curse to women to being their biggest blessing in their fight against sexual harassment.

Situation

In 2017, a controversy erupted in Uttar Pradesh, India’s most populous state. Several retailers were caught selling mobile numbers belonging to women. Further probes revealed that such practices were rampant across the country. Sexual predators were harassing women in the privacy of their homes. Every woman with a phone was now a potential target of mobile harassment – from creepy calls at odd hours, abusive text messages, suggestive images, vulgar videos to even threats

Brief

There was an urgent need to find the root of this crisis and address it immediately. We also needed to find ways of protecting all our women subscribers from mobile harassment in the future

Objectives

1. Find a simple, practical solution which would empower women to defend their own privacy

2. The solution had to be simple enough to adopt, and scale across Vodafone India’s entire female subscriber base