Catch — Support the push.

Inspiration

Transport delays to a hospital are a real, documented risk during labor in rural and semi-urban India. When help can't arrive in time, the only person present is often untrained, frightened, and alone. We built Catch for exactly that moment — not to replace a doctor, but to keep a bystander calm, informed, and connected to real help.

What it does

Catch is a fully offline, voice-guided companion for a bystander supporting a mother through labor when a hospital can't be reached in time. It narrates hands-free, step-by-step guidance in English, Tamil, or Hindi, controllable by a phone shake so the user never has to touch the screen. It draws a firm line at medical technique — it never teaches delivery, only supports the mother's own process — and escalates immediately to real help (India's 102/108/104 emergency numbers) for anything abnormal. A Contraction Timer and multiple family profiles round out the free and premium experience.

How we built it

Built with Expo and React Native, chosen specifically to stay buildable on modest hardware via EAS cloud builds. All data is stored fully on-device with AsyncStorage — there is no backend or server, by design, since the app must work with zero connectivity. Voice narration uses expo-speech (fully on-device TTS), shake detection uses expo-sensors, and RevenueCat powers the premium subscription tier. Every piece of emergency guidance content was cross-checked against multiple independent clinical sources (NSW Health, Red Cross-derived material) rather than written freehand.

Challenges we ran into

Getting the hands-free shake gesture right without false triggers; making sure Tamil and Hindi text — which runs longer than English — never overlapped critical safety UI like the emergency call buttons; and drawing a safe, honest line between "supporting" a birth and "performing" one, so the app never gives instructions beyond what's genuinely safe for an untrained bystander.

Accomplishments that we're proud of

A complete, hands-free emergency flow with real voice narration in three languages; a genuine, working RevenueCat subscription with free and premium tiers that never gates the actual safety-critical content; and a built-in bridge to India's real emergency numbers (102/108/104) with automatic GPS-location SMS to a saved contact.

What we learned

Effective state management patterns under real-time constraints.

Prioritizing core MVP features over edge cases to deliver a solid product on time. ## What's next for Catch — Support the push. Getting real clinical review of the guidance content from a licensed doctor or nurse; expanding language support further; and exploring a lightweight telehealth bridge for the moments that go beyond what any app can safely guide alone.