UVfy — India’s first Ai Powered Automatic UV Sterilizer for Elevators of Hotels / Clubs of Mumbai

Junaid Chuqtai
3 min readMay 27, 2021

With one lockdown after the other in the past two years, the hospitality sector has received huge blows. Even in the absence of lockdowns, restrictions such as night curfews took a heavy toll on hotel businesses incurring them losses amounting up to INR 90,000 Cr and forcing them to close their service during peak hours leading to an approximate shrinkage of the industry by 65%.

As evident as it is, the rise in fatalities in the city is making people think twice before leaving the safe place that is their home and visiting public spaces. Surviving in these times as a hotel business requires one to assure their staff and their customers that the hotel/club is as safe as the former ones’ homes.
This can be done only when the public space is actually safer. The most common spreading ground for the virus in any hotel/club is the elevator. This is because viruses like the SARS-CoV-2 virus which causes COVID 19 are air-borne and can easily spread if there’s just one infected individual who travels in the elevator. The nearly fully enclosed automatic elevators do not facilitate natural ventilation and risk the life of every individual who enters in, breathes the same contaminated air and moves out, exposing all others who come in contact to the same virus which lingered in the elevator air they inhaled. Wearing masks only reduces the risk but does not eliminate it. Our previous approaches saw us use spray sanitizers each time the elevator was used, which was tedious, impractical and did not serve the purpose well. Sanitizers only disinfect metallic surfaces of an elevator while the virus stays lingering in the air within. To make the space safer is to exterminate the virus from the elevator air.

That is why our team from dVerse Labs (Chennai) has come up with an apt product called the UVfy.

UVfy and it’s features

This MIT COVID-19 challenge winner and ICMR Empaneled Lab Certified product is a smart handrail that auto-sterilizes possible and often overlooked hotspots like elevators, consultation rooms and other hotspots in hospitals, residential buildings and hotels using UV rays.

All of this without leaving a single residue or odor, carried out in the absence of humans and pets with the assistance of artificial intelligence after every elevator use.

UVfy has already successfully been installed in different locations in Southern India, and I assume it’s time hotels and clubs in Mumbai upgrade the safety of their spaces, their staff and customers and keep the flow of their business undisturbed during these challenging times.

Additionally, taking this new improvised and apt approach towards hygiene and safety unlike other hotels/clubs which still use inapt and archaic means will attract them new customers.

For quotations and enquiries please Call / WhatsApp us at : +91–9326766982

To know more about our startup visit our website

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Junaid Chuqtai

Social Media & Web Content Manager by the day, automotive videographer by night