Mumbai’s ‘service’ industry hasn’t changed a great deal in the decades gone by; only the gurkha has become the suave guard; the milkman now delivers smart packages, the multi-tasking bai has remained the same. However, one of these services, the courier boy, is undergoing a radical change, thanks to a little-known Kashmiri entrepreneur. Twenty-eight year old Dhruv Lakra, an MBA graduate from Oxford University, recently flagged off operations of Mirakle Couriers, and all his employees are deaf.
When we catch up with this ‘social entrepreneur’ in his South Mumbai office, he’s having an animated chat with his team. “When was the last time you interacted with a deaf person?” he asks us. Can’t recall? Well, chances are that you may not remember even seeing them. “They are ‘invisible’ in India!” he asserts, “While you can help a visually impaired person to catch a train or help someone on crutches to cross a road, deaf people are overlooked.” No wonder it’s one of the most underfunded disabilities in our country, despite it being home to an estimated 60 million of them.
It was this realisation and a personal tragedy - Lakra’s father met with an accident last year and can’t walk anymore - which inspired him to quit his Merrill Lynch job to find his calling. His research indicated that the hearing imparied only found jobs in fields like candle or file-making. His Eureka moment occurred while receiving a courier delivery. “Here was a job made-to-order for these people. Reaching destinations and taking signatures does not require communication at all,” he says. And Mirakle Couriers came into being.
However, Dhruv had to face and overcome, several challenges. The biggest being the attitude of his employees’ families. “While some are proud, most are over-protective about their children, especially girls,” he says. Also, he has to constantly up their self-esteem. The logistics of this business too was extraordinary. “I spent many weeks on-the-job with them, fine-tuning the process. I realised they wouldn’t hear the lift door musically crying if it’s unclosed, and what a misleading address can do to their confidence,” he says.
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Lakra attaches the ‘ISL’ sheet with each delivery
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His 15-member strong team then devised signs to communicate possibly everything we deem mundane. Such as names of places: wavy hands indicate Chowpatty or Charni Road, Vile Parle is indicated by a biscuit-bite gesture. Care is taken that each packet has a prominent landmark, and their boss is in touch with every boy on-field. “SMS is our lifeline at times,” he says.
We start gesticulating more to know how the employees’ lives have changed. Ivan tells us of his run-ins with insensitive watchmen, Ravinder gestures how this job is better than carrying cement sacks. The company has three ladies too - Jyoti handles the administration while Reshma and Neena are responsible for the sorting. Be it the reticent Rakesh or Suraj, who went to Sachin Tendulkar’s home, we sense in them a common desire to be counted as equals.
Alongwith fulfilling these, Lakra is spiritedly trying to expand the business. “I expect empathetic support from my clients; I am not running a charity,” he says. He also wants awareness about the deaf and the little-known Indian Sign Language (ISL). For his newly created Mirakle, his patient vision is the biggest asset. “I’m planning to go pan-India in the long run, be the next Fedex… with a difference.”
Mirakle Courier Company is courier company with a difference in Mumbai. We hire underprivileged deaf boys for pick-ups and drops and the sorting is done by deaf girls. In India people with different abilities have been discouraged for a long time as a result of this discrimination there is a strong sense in the minds that they are useless and not worthy of anything. I am just using the word “they” for reference, we are one team and there are no differences.
