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Revathi Roy has carefully kept aside her first earnings of Rs. 200 from her rental taxi service, For She. And with that money, she wants to buy the company’s shares when it goes public. However, before we jump the gun to the IPO, let’s get to the humble beginnings of India’s first taxi service for women, by women.

“I love to drive and I love cars. I know how they work and I have always been the designated driver for my family and friends. Despite this, my friends would still give me directions to drive. One day, out of sheer frustration, I said I’d rather have a taxi service for women. It was an impulsive outburst, but the idea stuck with me till I did something about it,” Roy recounts.

At the time when she thought of setting up the service, Roy’s personal life was rife with misfortune. With her husband in a coma, all assets sold, no bank balance and three children to support, Roy—then 47—also did not have any idea of the transportation sector or the public transport market.

Despite the odds, Roy began looking for an advertising agency in Mumbai that would give her publicity on credit—even before she had arranged for the cars. She found Ubiquitous through a local dial-up service and struck a deal for logos and print advertisements in local papers worth Rs. 5 lakh. If she could pay back the money within three months, she would pay half the advertising cost; if she failed to pay it back within six months, she would forfeit her idea and business to the ad agency.

The first ads appeared in January ‘07, announcing the launch of For She in March that year. Four days later, Roy’s husband passed away. “I had nothing further to lose. Swami Vivekananda’s message that one needs vision more than eyes inspired me to hit out on my own and shape the business up.” A friend contributed two second-hand cars, but the first customers only came in May ‘07. A samaritan gave her Rs. 5 lakh, and she paid off her advertising
credit, taking a discount of 50 percent. With the remaining amount, Roy set up an office in a garage; she would fill fuel for the cars and send them out with no passengers all over the city for publicity. Roy herself drove a taxi for ten months. Later, some of her customers—predominantly senior citizens and families—helped her buy 12 more cars.

In November that year, a chance meeting with Orix Auto Infrastructure Limited led to a strategic alliance between the company and For She. Today, the fleet flaunts 41 Maruti Suzuki Versas, especially designed for Orix, with services available in Mumbai and Delhi. By then end of this year, Roy plans to launch the service in Kolkata and another Indian metro. Business is now moving into top gear, but the road’s been rough. The hardest part was to convince authorities to issue 24-hour permits to run the cabs.

Hiring women drivers wasn’t a cakewalk, either. To tide over the latter, Roy started training women, mostly from the urban poor community. Her training school, run by her company For She Travel and Logistics Pvt. Ltd., trains 25 girls every batch. Upon graduating, they become associates with Orix and get a fixed salary of Rs. 5,000 a month for working 12-hour shifts for 26 days. In addition, they get per kilometer revenue, eventually earning between Rs. 7,000-10,000. Since the drivers are not under anyone’s direct payroll, they are almost self-employed.

Recently, the Bombay Municipal Corporation has also tied up with Roy’s training institute to sponsor the training of 23 girls and help mobilize the urban poor women into employment. Apart from driving skills, they are trained in soft and language skills, martial arts and city/ road familiarization. This ensures safety while driving at night and the girls can double up as tour guides for foreign tourists, Roy explains.

Roy has moved away from hard core operations of the business. But she is at the heart of it by providing manpower, which is at a premium in this all women’s business. Roy is upbeat about the future and hopes to have 200 For She cabs on Indian streets by the end of this year.

Roy points out that Indian banks are of no help if you don’t have a business plan with precedence. She praises the bureaucrats who showed complete faith in her novel idea, and curses the lack of competition, as it means she is the only one scouting for women drivers and training them. But at the end of the day, Roy is a happy entrepreneur who fought to take her business plan off the ground, despite all odds. She is now turning the fortune of other women.

©Entrepreneur September 2009

Tags:
cabs, drivers, For She, Revathi Roy, smetv, travel, women