‘Like Uber for snake emergencies’: tech takes the sting out of bites in rural India

Venomous snakebites cause tens of thousands of deaths each year. But homegrown apps are coming to the rescue - and protecting reptiles from reprisals

When 12-year-old Anay Sujith felt a sharp sting in his leg while asleep in his hut in a village in Kerala, I started yelling and woke up my parents," he recalls. They immediately sought help - not with a phone call, but through an app.

A team from Kannur Wildlife Rescuers (KWR) reached the boy's home, in Ramatheru village in the coastal city of Kannur, within minutes and he was admitted to hospital 20 minutes later. He had been bitten four times by a venomous Russell's viper, one of the big four" snakes in India responsible for the greatest number of venomous snakebites.