Evacuation-help register and drills for high-rise housing societies
TL;DR Stairwise helps high-rise housing societies know, before a fire, which residents can't get down the stairs alone. With each resident's consent, it keeps a short register by flat and floor, prints a card for firefighters at the gate and runs drills. Societies and facility managers pay a yearly fee.
India recorded 7,435 deaths in more than 7,500 fire accidents in 2022, and in 2019 residential buildings accounted for 58% of fire deaths[1]. Tall apartment towers are spreading across Indian cities, and the people who struggle most in them are older residents, people who use wheelchairs and anyone with a temporary injury.
In a fire, lifts become unsafe and the stairs are the way out. Yet most societies can't tell a fire crew which flats hold someone who needs to be carried. The guard has a visitor app, not a list of who needs help. And fire safety audits under the National Building Code are only advisory[1].
What it does, in regulatory terms: a fire-safety planning and record tool for building managers. It holds limited, consented information about the help a resident needs, not medical records or diagnoses.
Residents, or their families, fill in a short form - flat, floor, what help they need on stairs and who's usually home. The society's manager sees a floor-by-floor list. A one-page card for firefighters is printed and kept in a locked box at the gate, updated monthly. The app also schedules drills, logs who took part and flags flats where help needs arranging, such as a neighbour assigned to assist or an evacuation chair on that floor.
The seed proposed personalised evacuation plans for disasters in general. Mass evacuation for cyclones and floods is run by state agencies, and NDMA already sends geo-targeted warnings[2]. A building fire is where a household-level plan actually changes outcomes, and a society is a buyer you can find.
The resident who needs help pays nothing. The buyer is the society's managing committee or its facility management company. There's no public price for this. My assumption is ₹15,000–40,000 per tower per year, sold through facility managers who look after dozens of towers. Builders handing over new towers are a second buyer, since a ready register is an easy add to a handover pack.
In June 2026 BIS published building standards recommending evacuation lifts for persons with disabilities in high-rise buildings[3]. England made resident evacuation plans a legal duty for tall residential blocks from 6 April 2026[4], which gives Indian builders and fire officers a working model to borrow from.
Nobody publishes a figure for spending on evacuation planning by Indian housing societies. As an adjacent signal, one society-management app says it serves 25,000 housing societies[5], and a rival claims more than 25,000 communities[6]. That shows societies pay for safety and gate software, but it doesn't show they'll pay for this.
One society app offers a security alert to guards[5] and another an SOS button[6], but neither keeps a register of who needs help in a fire. In England, the London Fire Brigade asks building owners to keep resident plans as a hard copy in a secure information box on site[7], and housing providers mostly use templates. I found no Indian product doing this.
| Difficulty | Moderate (37/100) |
| Starting capital | ₹30–60 L |
| Time to launch | 4–6 months |
The software is small. The hard parts are getting residents to disclose a need, keeping the list current as people move and age, and persuading the local fire service to actually look at the card during a real call at night.
No special licence here. Fire-safety planning software has no permit of its own, so you need the baseline plus care with residents' data.
Building this outside India? The categories above usually have a local equivalent, so check with your own regulator.
Don't let AI guess what help someone needs or fill gaps in the register. Every entry must come from the resident or their family.
Want to work out the AI layer for Stairwise? Talk to Yash →
I see a sensible, small business here for a founder from facility management or fire safety who can sell to committees and facility firms. It is not venture-scale unless a state fire service mandates it. Prove first that 60% of eligible households in five towers will register within a month.
Plan for roughly ₹30–60 L, mostly on the software, a small sales team and drill support in the first towers.
No sector licence. You need company registration, GST once over the threshold, Shops and Establishments registration and DPDP compliance for residents' data.
Yes. England already requires resident evacuation plans in tall blocks, so check your local fire safety law first, as it may create the demand for you.
The free Stairwise validation kit has the line-by-line capital breakdown, the effort scoring, the fire-safety and data-protection checklist, a 14-day validation sprint with pass/fail targets, a 90-day launch plan, 10 interview questions for societies and residents, and 5 assumptions to test. Download the kit →
Thinking about building Stairwise or something close to it? The make-or-break work is getting residents to share what help they need and keeping that list current, and I'm happy to work through it with you. If you need a hand, you know where to find me. Talk to Yash →
For illustration only. Names are fictional and ideas hypothetical; sourced facts are real but may be out of date. Nothing here is legal, financial or professional advice, and Yash Khatri is not personally liable for any use of it. Read the full disclaimer.