Where a chiffon ghoonghat used to sit is a fiberglass helmet. It frames a cheerful face that wouldn't dare utter a word in front of male guests in small-town Rajasthan but now smiles easily at watchmen in Mumbai, threatens bribe-seeking traffic cops with selfies, and drinks tea offered by strangers.
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Life has taken a U-turn for Lalita Vaishnav after she learned to drive a scooter this January and took a job as a delivery girl. Before that, this girl from a Mumbai chawl had surrendered happily to an arranged marriage in a Jaipur village. Vaishnav was pregnant with her second child when she lost her husband in a road accident in 2013, and, scared and alone, had to return to Mumbai. Over the last six months, that timid woman has transformed into a plastic-bangles-and-T-shirt-wearing alter ego who rides a shiny blue scooter, delivers sweets and maternity care products, and earns enough to forgive the neighbourhood tailor who still owes her money for a sewing job.
She works for Revathi Roy whose office bears a poster with JK Rowling's wisdom: 'Rock bottom is the foundation I rebuilt my life upon'. Roy once drove a taxi to pay the bills when her husband was in a coma, and later launched an all-woman cab service to help urban poor women become financially independent. Now, the serial social entrepreneur has started an instant parcel delivery service, Hey Deedee. It trains women from families with an annual income of less than Rs 1 lakh to ride a two-wheeler and helps them secure soft loans to buy a bike for the job that pays Rs 10,000 a month. With an army of 100 riders in Mumbai, Nagpur, and Bengaluru that delivers parcels for Brijwasi, The Curry Brothers, ShopHop, Pizza Hut and Amazon among others, "we want to become the Uber of parcel deliveries," says Roy.
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Others companies such as Delhi-based Even Cargo, KFC India, and Amazon.in have seen sense in helping women enter the male-dominated segment called 'last-mile'. "The retention rate of these employees is very good," says Karina Bhasin who manages community engagement at Even Cargo, which has trained and employed eight women "rider partners".
Two major stumbling blocks have kept women from entering the last-mile segment in India. Concern about safety is one. To combat this, some promise daytime working hours and a shorter radius. Amazon.in, which runs two women-only delivery stations in Thiruvananthapuram and Chennai, not only trains the women in self-defense but also has a helpline.
Bharat Ahirwar of Russsh, a same-day delivery service in Mumbai which recently hired two female college students, had a policy of pick-ups "only from houses and offices of premium customers" and did not send them to certain parts of the city "to avoid complicated situations".
Another largely under-rated factor that keeps India's female workforce unpaid is "family pressures". "If the father is sick, the daughter is expected to stay home to look after him," says Roy, who has even found problems such as odd timings of water supply interfering with working hours.
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At Hey Deedee, some Muslim women come in burqas, change into jeans and wear a naqab over the T-shirt, careful not to obscure the name on the back. Some middle-aged, sari-clad Maharashtrian women have donned a salwar for the first time before training. Many areas daunted by the idea of entering unknown localities as they are impressed by Google Maps. "What if people slam the door on us?" they ask road safety and personality development instructor Nikhil Kalelkar, who calms such fears saying: "You are not salespeople."
The job transforms them in unexpected ways. During a six-month-stint with Russsh, commerce student Pooja Pawar fought her crippling shyness. In the course of spending six hours daily boarding local trains and buses to deliver documents, pen drives, chocolates, and cakes, the 21-year-old not only discovered how to navigate the city but also the art of small talk. "My English has improved," says the sole earning member of her family.
After the initial look of surprise on discovering a woman delivery person, some customers offer water or tea. "The tips are better if you are friendly," says Vaishnav. A resident of Mahalaxmi's Pathan chawl who did close to 20 deliveries a day during Raksha Bandhan and Ganesh Chaturthi, Vaishnav's proudest moment came in June when she could finally admit her six-year-old daughter in a convent school, paying Rs 5,000. Today, her first two deliveries for the day are inevitably her two daughters — when she drops them off at school.