KOVI – premium safety accessory

Covid-19. Who knew that 2020 would bring about such drastic changes to our lives. Lockdowns, work from home and the ever lingering fear of the dreadful corona virus. We are forced to look at our ways and we are more responsible than ever in keeping ourselves and our loud ones safe during this pandemic. As product designers, when we got the opportunity to create something that could go a small way in creating something that can help people stay safe, we jumped on it. Here’s the story of how KOVI, a premium safety accessory 

The opportunity for KOVI came about when a student from IISc, Bangalore shared his idea and wanted help in refining a design for manufacturing. A sliding brass hook enclosed in a housing of a different material. The idea was simple and it helped keep direct contact levels (at public touch points like ATM keypads, elevator buttons, door handles, etc.) to a bare minimum as the brass element itself is enclosed in a housing. As the idea got refined by experts in Gemklip, the student found an alternate investor and wanted to develop his version of the product allowing Gemklip to develop our version. Gemklip’s versions was called “KOVI”.

After dozens of prototypes we were able to finalize on the size of the brass elements as well as the plastic housing. Finally, we got it to a size that struck the perfect balance in being handy enough to turn the product into a keychain/EDC object while still being large enough for the brass hook to allow for interactive with various public touch points.

And just as we reached out to a manufacturer, we found out that the covid-19 pandemic had put them out of business for several months and they were delighted that the same pandemic was now giving them a business opportunity. After studying the first batch production samples and tweaking them for fitment we finally got the product the exact way we wanted it.

Next came the selling. with KOVI, Gemklip was eager to try crowdfunding. Having met with the founder of the Indian crowdfunding site Fuel-a-dream, and having always been interested in exploring crowdfunding, we thought KOVI was the ideal product for it. With the product being in the final stages of production, we created quick campaign materials for crowdfunding (a teaser video, the story-behind video and several promotional images). It was also incidental that the festive season was just around the corner. The campaign was created focused on the idea of KOVI being the ideal gift for the coming festive season and it saw success around half the campaign duration.

KOVI goes on sale at Gemklip.com and Amazon. So if you landed here and are looking for the ideal gift for this festive season, we are sure KOVI will be the perfect fit for you, for it helps keep you and your loved ones safe. so this festive season, let’s celebrate with safety with KOVI.