1.

About Dhruv Lakra:

Dhruv Lakra, CEO (Mirakle Couriers)
Dhruv founded Mirakle Couriers after his MBA in social entrepreneurship at Oxford. Graduating from HR College, he pursued a few years in Investment Banking at Merill Lynch. Dissatisfied he left the bank to work in rural Tamil Nadu for a few years. Wanting to explore the middle way between social work and conventional business, leading him to the Skoll program for Social Entrepreneurship at Oxford. As CEO, Dhruv spends his time meeting new clients, looking after the finances and leading the company forward. Dhruv has been awarded the Echoing Green fellowship, $60,000 in seed funding and technical support that will turn his innovative idea into a scaled up sustainable social change organization.

2. Background:
Born in the war-torn state of Jammu and Kashmir in India, Dhruv Lakra moved to Mumbai for his higher education and earned his Bachelors in Commerce from HR College of Commerce and Economics, Mumbai University. He completed a Postgraduate Diploma in Social Enterprise Management at South Indian Education Society, College of Management Studies, where he was recognized as the Most Enterprising Student. Dhruv began his career in investment banking with Merrill Lynch Mumbai, in the Mergers and Acquisitions Department. After two years, he moved to Dasra, then a small non-profit start-up with a mission to professionalise the non-profit sector through management skills. Dhruv's background in both investment banking and non-profit, led him to recognise the power of business for social change. He decided to do an MBA to learn about organisational models that blend social and financial return. He chose the Sad Business School because of its strong focus on social entrepreneurship and the opportunity to become a Skoll Scholar, which he achieved in 2007/2008.

3. Inception of the idea:

Once upon a time, Dhruv was sitting on a bus next to a young boy looking eagerly out the window. In fact he was not just eager but actually being very restless. He was looking around anxiously, seeming slightly lost. Dhruv asked him where he was going but the boy did not respond. It took him a few seconds to realize that this boy was unable to hear or speak. He was deaf. Though the bus conductor regularly announced the stops this boy still did not know where he was. Dhruv took out a piece of paper and wrote to him in Hindi asking him where he was going. Through the back and forth pen and paper exchange, it suddenly dawned on Dhruv how difficult life was for the deaf. Something as straightforward as a bus became a struggle. Over the next few months Dhruv spent time exploring the deaf culture and learning Indian Sign Language. He focused on a courier business because it requires a lot of visual skills but no verbal communication. The deaf are extremely good at maps reading, remembering roads and buildings because they are so visually inclined.

4. Brief about the company:

Mirakle Couriers is a courier company with a difference as they employ only deaf adults. Deafness is an invisible disability, and has been largely ignored in India. All the staff members including delivery personnel are deaf. The business model is based on creating a service driven profitable enterprise that uses the deaf. To this end, they marry professional excellence with social cause. While their services are currently available only in Mumbai, they plan to extend their operations to other cities soon. They are not a charity but a social business, where the social element is embedded in the commercial operations. Their corporate clients have shown their trust in the business and the cause by availing their services. Their list of clients includes Mahindra & Mahindra, the Aditya Birla Group, Victory Art Foundation, JSW Group, Indian Hotels Company, Godrej & Boyce and Essel Propack. Over the last two years Mirakle Couriers has grown to operate in 2 Branches in the city, employing 70 deaf employees and delivering over 65,000 shipments per month. It has won several awards including the 2009 Hellen Keller award and the 2010 National Award for the Empowerment of People With Disablities.

The Delivery Process Everything from pick-up to delivery is carefully planned at our branches in sign language. Our field agents receive instructions via sms of a clients address and a time for when documents need to be picked up. Upon arriving at the clients office the shipments are counted and a count confirmation sms is sent back to the branch supervisor. Transportation Due to the aural nature of Indian traffic, our field agents travel only via public transport. However in a city like mumbai, public transportation is far more reliable and efficient than struggling through congested roads. Relying on feet, bus and rail also has the added environmental benefit of keeping us on a low carbon footprint. Communication The primary language used at Mirakle Couriers is Indian Sign Language (ISL). All organization of courier operations and management of teams is conducted in Sign Language. The management team and each employee is fluent in ISL. We have one designated phone operator who contacts consignees to confirm a change of address. She then will explain the situation to our staff in ISL. Interestingly, the courier company sends a copy of some common greetings (Hello, Thank you, Sorry etc) in sign language along with each of their deliveries.

5. Difficulties:
The initial days & the teething problems:
Initial days were really tough, and they still are. The challenges are multi fold - ranging from strong social perceptions to business related. For example, many people turn them down because companies are worried how they can deliver shipments anywhere in Mumbai the next day. Even very basic things such as how do the deaf communicate are asked. People dont even know there is a language called Indian Sign Language.

Challenges usually faced:

Changing perceptions of companies and individuals, taking the family into confidence, developing skill sets for a low income community which has had no experience of working professionally - these are the challenges that we face.

There are legal and financial regulations that also make it a non - conducive environment for disability related issues to get discussed and businesses to mushroom that can employ people with disabilities. Training the delivery men, Dhruv says, was challenging. They had to be shown their way around town, and most importantly had to be taught the skills of interpersonal communication, like the right body language, presentation and some do's and don'ts. For example, they must make sure that when they exit a lift, they close the door properly because they cannot hear the chime that alerts one to an open door. Dhruv says that training one delivery agent takes him roughly 15 days. The challenges that this young social entrepreneur faces today are diverse. When he started out in 2009 with one delivery boy, he worked out of a friend's house and delivered letters himself. Then as business grew thanks to the generosity of Anu Aga of Thermax he managed to get a working space enough for six to seven people. Dhruv approached Sheriff of Mumbai and Ms. Indu Shahani, Principal of HR College. They introduced him to Anu Aga of Thermax. Thermax provided space for operations. However, the training costs of deaf persons are high. The other point is even if there is a delay in service due to guanine reason, people attributes it to the disability of the people servicing them. While people in general show sympathy towards disabled persons, when it comes to payments no organization is willing to pay a paisa more than what they pay for others.

6. Overcoming the problems:

"There's the concern of safety and delivery of the shipments. Some of our clients worry about their shipments getting lost. Convincing them sometimes is difficult." That's when the big corporate houses Mirakle works with come handy. "It helps to work with big names. When people realize that we work with Mahindra and Godrej, it adds to our credibility. (Also) we're not an NGO. We are offering them a service." After getting the idea over the next few months Dhruv spent time exploring the deaf culture and learning Indian Sign Language which helped him a lot in training the employees & understanding them. He completed a Postgraduate Diploma in Social Enterprise Management at South Indian Education Society, College of Management Studies, which led him to recognize the power of business for social change.

Conclusion:
Entrepreneurship is a challenging and rewarding profession. There is a need to concentrate on market analysis, financial resources, and technology management. One cannot compete directly with the big guys, so need to be ingenious and innovative in all entrepreneurial functions. It is important to understand the construct of risk and uncertainty. Businesses have always faced risks. Recent events around the world in the last few years have provided dramatic evidence that, in todays business world, risk is now a reality. Dhruv Lakra says, "The attitude of the past 50 years or so has been closely linked to our insensitivity: for instance, it is common practice in many Indian families to go to a disability school on a child's birthday and distribute sweets to the less fortunate."

Bibliography:
http://www.sbs.ox.ac.uk/centres/skoll/scholars/Pages/DhruvLakra.aspx http://www.miraklecouriers.com/awards-and-recognition/ http://www.dnis.org/print_interview.php?interview_id=122 http://infochangeindia.org/disabilities/changemakers/mirakles-dohappen.html