ENTREPRENEUR / STARTUP SPECIAL (6) A Helping Hand

ENTREPRENEUR / STARTUP SPECIAL (6) A Helping Hand





A social business in Hubli does its bit to empower women

If entrepreneurship is a tough life, social entrepreneurship is arguably even tougher. Shravani Pawar, 28, will agree. For the graduate in social work, it all began when she got picked as a social fellow by the Deshpande Foundation, an NGO founded by venture capitalist and entrepreneur Gururaj Deshpande and his wife Jaishree. Pawar figured the best way to empower women was to help them get financially independent. So in 2009, when she was just 23, she started Safe Hands 247.

The first and biggest challenge was at home with her parents asking her to drop the plan and pick up a regular job and get married. Pawar chose her passion over her parents. “Their opposition made my resolve even stronger to make a success out of Safe Hands,“ says Pawar.When she started, there were two other cofounders but they soon left the waferthin margin business.

“It is a treat to see Pawar, her phenomenal energy and her passion to work for women empowerment,“ says Naveen Jha, chief executive officer of Deshpande Foundation, who has been mentoring her since inception.

Safe Hands today deploys 400 security guards in five districts of Karnataka, and a majority of them are women.P a w a r hopes that in one to two years, Safe Hands will be able to have a presence across Karnataka. And maybe even outside the state; a proposal from an NGO in Kolkata to set up office there is lying with Pawar.

Safe Hands works with mostly uneducated women who are deployed as security personnel or guards in commercial complexes like hospitals, colleges, schools and malls.Almost all women who are deployed by the startup have stepped out of their homes for the first time to earn their livelihood. Their starting salary is `6,000 plus statutory benefits. Since inception, she has been supported by the Deshpande Foundation which also put in the seed capital of `1.25 lakh, besides mentoring and monitoring. Today, the startup has an annual turnover of `2.6 crore.Profits came in from the second month itself, although it is a low-margin business. By 2017, Pawar hopes to grow the revenue to `5 crore.

A constant challenge for Pawar is to keep going in a male-dominated industry. “They do not take women seriously,“ says the mother of a one and a half yearold son. Her husband has joined the business, and Pawar has decided to make the company a private limited one and hire more experienced staff.

There are societal challenges, too.

“In a small town, getting women guards to wear a shirt and pant has been a big problem and often a deal-breaker as their families often do not allow them to,“ says Pawar. But she is clear that to sus tain a profes sional oper ation she cannot compro mise on these basics.

Being located in a small town means competition is mini mal, although the flip side is that there's no rival to pick up best industry practices from, and thereby improve. Also, the ticket size is lot smaller in the non-metros. “Despite the odds, we would prefer them to focus on smaller towns,“ says Jha.

The startup has reached a stage where it needs to put structures and processes in place; and it needs additional funding to hire seasoned executives who will help the company scale. “Getting an investor in a low-margin business is difficult. And, often, the so-called impact investor or patient capital in India is more impatient for returns than a VC,“ says Jha.

So Pawar most likely will lean on a bank loan and organic growth to generate funds and slowly scale up. “The way we are able to make a difference to the lives of these women is the biggest motivator for me.“

Malini Goyal

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