The News Minute| September 5, 2014| 8.30 pm IST(Last updated: 10.03 am IST)‘Undercover Colours’ is a new fashion company that makes a different variety of nail colour. But that's not all it does. The nail polish can detect certain "date rape" drugs.Four Material Science and Engineering students from the North Carolina University, USA have developed a prototype of nail polish that changes colour when it comes in contact with drugs mixed in drinks. The nail colour changes if the drink is mixed with drugs like Rohypnol, Xanax, or GHB.The four have now floated a company ‘Undercover Colours’ which they say is the first fashion company "empowering women to prevent sexual assault". The four student-founders have received $11,250 from Lulu e-games and another $1,00,000 from an investor. “We wanted to focus on preventive solutions especially those that could be integrated into products that women already use,†said Ankesh Madan, the Indian who is one of the founders, The Mary Sue reports. The Facebook page of UC reads: ‘In the U.S., 18% of women will be sexually assaulted in their lifetime. That’s almost one out of every five women in our country. We may not know who they are, but these women are not faceless. They are our daughters, they are our girlfriends, and they are our friends. While date rape drugs are often used to facilitate sexual assault, very little science exists for their detection. Our goal is to invent technologies that empower women to protect themselves from this heinous and quietly pervasive crime. Through this nail polish and similar technologies, we hope to make potential perpetrators afraid to spike a woman’s drink because there’s now a risk that they can get caught. In effect, we want to shift the fear from the victims to the perpetrators. We are Undercover Colors and we are the first fashion company empowering women to prevent sexual assault.’While the intention behind the invention was appreciated, the invention has come in for much criticism for projecting the product as something that can "prevent rape". Using such language also puts the onus of not getting raped on women. Many women are simply at a loss to understand how this can prevent sexual assault, when all it does is detect the presence of certain drugs in a drink. Also, many pointed out that sexual assault is not limited to when women go out for drinks. For more on the criticism of this product, see BBC report.Read: #BBCtrending: Backlash against nail polish to detect 'rape drug'A report in The Washington Post said that the nail polish was also not a sound product, and would often not detect the drugs it was meant to detect, it also throw up a positive result for substances others than the chemicals in question.Read: What was fake on the Internet this week: Date-rape nail polish, ‘two moons’ and the return of ‘Breaking Bad’