Doosra app: Protecting the privacy of India’s COVID-19 volunteers

The Hyderabad-made app Doosra provides users with a virtual phone number to protect their privacy and upkeep their safety

In 2015, Nivetha Sakthivel was volunteering to send relief materials from Coimbatore for the flood victims in Chennai. One night, she got a call from an unknown number when supervising boxes getting loaded into a vehicle. “Hey, how are you?” the man at the other end asked. Half a minute into the conversation, Nivetha realised he was trying to flirt with her. “It was so frustrating. You are already stressed, managing all the work and calls for help and you have to deal with such people,” she says. The call wasn’t a one-off. She received over 200 such calls and numerous messages asking her “for friendship” — many of them even months after her volunteering stint.