Kalpana Viswanath is a social entrepreneur in India. She is the co-founder and CEO of Safetipin, a social enterprise which uses technology and apps to collect data for the safe movement of women in urban spaces. Viswanath is on the advisory board of UN Habitat, International Centre for the Prevention of Crime and SLOCAT. She was part of a study group with Delhi government to prepare a report on Women's Safety in Delhi.

Career

Viswanath studied sociology at the

University of Delhi The Delhi University (DU, ISO 15919, ISO: ), also and officially known as the University of Delhi, is a collegiate university, collegiate research university, research Central university (India), central university located in Delhi, India. It ...

. Her PhD thesis was on ‘A Sociological Analysis of the Contemporary Women’s Movement in India’. Viswanath served as the director of Jagori Women's Resource Centre from 2000 till 2007. She worked on issues such as migration, trafficking of women workers and violence against women. She also worked with government and non-government stakeholders on the Safe Delhi campaign, which focused on violence against women in public spaces. Viswanath was a project director for the Gender Inclusive Cities Project with Women in Cities International. The research was carried out in Tanzania, Argentina, Russia and India from January 2009 to March 2012. She is the chair of the International Advisory Committee of Women in Cities International. She has also worked as a senior advisor at

UN Habitat The United Nations Human Settlements Programme (UN-Habitat) is the United Nations programme for human settlements and sustainable urban development. It was established in 1977 as an outcome of the first United Nations Conference on Human Settlem ...

. She created partnerships with government and other stakeholders in

New Delhi New Delhi (; ) is the Capital city, capital of India and a part of the Delhi, National Capital Territory of Delhi (NCT). New Delhi is the seat of all three branches of the Government of India, hosting the Rashtrapati Bhavan, New Parliament ...

for the programme on safer cities from April 2010 to September 2013. In 2013, Viswanath co-founded Safetipin with Ashish Basu. Safetipin addresses the need to combat increasing violence against women and girls in public places, with its app. The platform has been used by individuals as well as urban stakeholders such as governments. Safetipin has worked with various countries, researching and generating reports to make their cities safe for women. Its work includes listing data on the presence of street lights and mapping unsafe routes and transport availability. Viswanath writes columns for the ''

Hindustan Times ''Hindustan Times'' is an Indian English language, English-language daily newspaper based in Delhi. It is the flagship publication of HT Media Limited, an entity controlled by the Birla family, and is owned by Shobhana Bhartia, the daughter o ...

'', ''The Wire'', and ''Mint''.

Publications

* Viswanath, K., & Basu, A. (2 January 2015). SafetiPin: an innovative mobile app to collect data on women's safety in Indian cities. ''Gender & Development, 23,'' 1, 45–60. * Kalpana, V., & Surabhi, T. M. (28 April 2007). 'Shall We Go out?' Women's Safety in Public Spaces in Delhi. ''Economic and Political Weekly, 42,'' 17, 1542–1548.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Viswanath, Kalpana Year of birth missing (living people) Living people Delhi University alumni Indian social entrepreneurs