All-deaf courier service turns a social liability into

Gargi Banerjee

Ganesh Sawant is like any other ordinary Mumbaikar. As a courier delivery boy, he saves enough to live comfortably and still send money back home to his village where his family lives. Yet, till about four years ago, Sawant was written off as a liability by his family because he was deaf. That was until he met Dhruv Lakra, founder and CEO of Mirakle Couriers, an innovative Mumbai-based courier service manned entirely by a 48-member team of hearing-impaired boys and a back office run by 20 deaf women. Service With A Smile With their bright and hard-to-miss fluorescent orange uniform, each Mirakle boy is quick, efficient and eager to deliver with a smile. Little wonder then, that in the four years since it was launched, Mirakle Couriers has a perfect track record of zero-defect deliveries. With over 30 corporate clients now, Mirakle has also ventured into e-commerce deliveries and is looking at this space as a new growth area. As for the Mirakle lads, each of whom hails from the low economic strata, there are special measures to make things easy on them. For instance, the company has a pin code allocation system, whereby every delivery boy is assigned a locality not far from where he lives. Revenue Model Lakra makes it clear that his company is not a charitable enterprise, nor does it provide discounts to clients. For a logistics business to be profitable, it is essential to offer competitive pricing. Like any other courier company, Mirakle offers a card rate of Rs 10 per local letter and Rs 12-13 for a package that weighs under 250 gm. Where volumes are larger, the rates change but Lakra reiterates that they are “competitive” and prices vary only with the weight and material in the package. Currently, Mirakle Couriers takes deliveries from two prime locations in Mumbai – Churchgate (in the heart of the city) and Andheri (a nodal western suburb). The company also serves all the major metros in the country and does international deliveries through tie-ups with global partners. Mirakles Do Happen! Dhruv Lakra is bright and energetic, and in his early 30s. What sets him apart from other entrepreneurs his age is his clarity of purpose and his calling. A chance encounter with a deaf passenger on a local bus when the latter was ‘speaking’ with a co-passenger made Lakra realise that hearing impaired was the most ignored disability in India because it is not ‘visible’. It is also the most under-funded. Thus, Lakra decided to be the brand ambassador for the hearing impaired instead of becoming a high-profile investment banker, as he had earlier planned. When he found that a staggering 66 per cent of the hearing impaired in India are unemployed, Lakra made it his mission to employ between 1-5 per cent low-income deaf adults in every Indian state capital. A courier delivery enterprise seemed perfect for hearing impaired employees because the delivery boys barely need to interact with customers. Morale Booster “Reaching out to these boys was not easy, and there was a lot of scepticism not only from them but their families, recalls Lakra. With little or no formal education, these boys made a pittance by doing odd jobs. So, to reach out to them, Lakra first learnt Indian sign language and got two boys on board. One of them was Ganesh Sawant. Business took off in January 2009, when Lakra himself used to travel door-to-door executing the deliveries with his employees. This gave them a massive boost in confidence and, soon, their friends joined in and Lakra’s band of boys began to expand. Those like Sawant, who were with Lakra from the beginning, began training new recruits and less than two years into the business, the start-up was running like a well-oiled machine. So Lakra began to concentrate on business development rather than worry about dispatch and delivery. Personal Sacrifices Obviously, it was not a bed of roses and Lakra had to invest the £ 300 he had saved from a scholarship while pursuing his MBA in Social Sciences at Oxford University. At the time, his start-up was based in a friend’s house in suburban Mumbai. The big breakthrough came when he received $15,000 from the Echoing Green Fellowship that supports outstanding social entrepreneurs in developing countries. Sustainable Dream While awards and recognition came early, corporate support was still lacking to make his business sustainable. While some corporates such as Thermax, the Aditya Birla Group, Godrej and Mahindra and Mahindra were willing to give Mirakle a chance, the bulk of corporate firms were sceptical about having hearing impaired delivery boys handle their shipments. Four years down the line, things have improved as more and more corporate houses are practising ‘supplier diversity’. This is a business practice that is popular in the West, where big business houses employ the services of suppliers from marginalised sections of society. This is considered a part of Corporate Social Responsibility. Dhruv Lakra’s Mirakle Couriers has made its mark in Mumbai although his dream to employ 1-5 per cent hearing impaired in each city is still only a distant possibility. One reason is Lakra’s dislike for sympathy. All he asks for is a fair chance. You can send your feedback on smementor@moneycontrol.com or simply post comments below