Julieta Rueff, founder and CEO of FlamAid, created a ‘peaceful grenade’ that issues an alert to authorities and helps protect those who are persecuted or in dangerous situations. A year after presenting the project to Expresso at Web Summit 2024, Julieta spoke about the innovations she has developed, and the experience of “helping 10 thousand people” with FlamAid.
The project by FlamAid, a company based in Barcelona, consists of a small ‘grenade’ that, when activated, emits a sound of 110 decibels and sends an alert to the authorities, with the location of the device. Julieta states that the device is already used by “more than 10 thousand people”.
In addition to the ‘grenade’, FlamAid developed a new app, with the same name as the company. It is free, and through it it is possible to send an alert to the authorities. After the warning is issued, the camera automatically starts recording, both image and sound, and the location is sent to the authorities (in the case of Portugal, to the PSP). The application also sends a text description, generated by Artificial Intelligence. “If there is an attacker, we can describe what he is using, whether he is armed or not, and where he is geographically.”
Julieta praises the advantages of this functionality, stating that people who felt threatened were able, thanks to the app, to collect images to report the case and present it in court.
In 2024, FlamAid’s CEO said the product was for “anyone who feels unsafe on the street,” whether they were women, men, children or the elderly. A year later, what we see is that “60% of people who buy the product are men, both fathers and husbands” who offer it to their daughters or wives, reveals Julieta.