A courier company with a difference

Our Story Mirakle Couriers was founded in January 2009. Started by Dhruv Lakra who combined his education and experience in both the business and social sectors to come up with a for-profit social enterprise. The idea to help the deaf was triggered by one particular incident he experienced while traveling on a bus in Mumbai. 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 realise 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. It is an invisible disability. You can not know when someone near you is deaf as there are no obvious physical attributes, and so its totally ignored. It is also a silent (voiceless) disability. There is very little public sympathy for the deaf, and by connection, a severe lack of government support for them in India. Particularly when it comes to employment there are no opportunities because no one has the patience or the foresight to learn deaf language and culture. This is how Mirakle Couriers was born. 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. 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. We have won several awards including the 2009 Hellen Keller award and the 2010 National Award for the Empowerment of People With Disablities. To find out more about us please read the other section

Who we are
Mirakle Couriers currently is 4 Management Staff and 64 Deaf Employees. Our back office is run by 20 hard working deaf women with learnt-by-doing knowledge in data entry and manipulation, tracking and scanning, sorting and other branch operations. On the field

we have a team 44 talented male deaf courier agents that navigate the complex lanes of Mumbai. They travel on public transport, avoiding traffic and remaining conscious of the environment.
Dhruv Lakra, CEO

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. You can read more about his motivations for starting Mirakle. As CEO Dhruv spends his time meeting new clients, looking after the finances and leading the company forward.
Nimesh Pawar, Operations

He is operations manager at our Churchgate Branch. With many years of experience in various courier agencies and other operations posts he brings order and efficiency to the Churchgate Team.
Sameer Bhosale, Operations

He is operations manager at our Andheri Branch. He has had many years of experience in courier companies such as Blue Dart, Velocity Couriers and Elbee Express. He commands the team work that work in the difficult area of Mumbais industrial suburbs.
Vidya Iyer, HR

She is HR manager across both branches. After attaining a high level in sign language interpretation, Vidya has joined our team to help recruit, train and manage the staff on a personal level through her fluency in the complex language.
Rohan Mehta

joined Mirakle for a year after his Masters S in January 2009. Taking on a supporting role for a year working in Marketing, Media and Business Development, he will remain an active participant in the company despite his physical absence.

What we do Mirakle Couriers is a courier company with a difference as we 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.

Our business model is based on creating a service driven profitable enterprise that uses the deaf. To this end, we marry professional excellence with social cause. While our services are currently available only in Mumbai, we plan to extend our operations to other cities soon. We are not a charity but a social business, where the social element is embedded in the commercial operations. Our corporate clients have shown their trust in our business and our cause by availing our services. Our list of clients includes Mahindra & Mahindra, The Aditya Birla Group, Victory Art Foundation, JSW Group, Indian Hotels Company, Godrej & Boyce and Essel Propack.

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. Once the packages arrive at our branch they are sorted, processed and prepared for delivery. The female staff will sort out the shipments based on pincodes. Further sorting is carried out by each field agent who is responsible for a designated area of delivery whose narrow lanes and unmarked buildings he has mastered. Once sorted each document is given a tracking code and entered into the system. This allows us to track and maintain transparency as to who is responsible for which shipment. Proof of Delivery (POD) or a digital delivery status report is then returned to our clients the day after delivery. For faulty or changed addresses we have one phone operator who will call the client or the consignee to confirm a new address. Any part of this delivery procedure can be customised by our clients if they have special requirements.

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. One should however consider the uniqueness of driving restrictions for the deaf in India. In almost every other country in the world the deaf can drive because it primarily requires sight but here the informal cultural habit of honking makes it inaccessible to the deaf. This ingrained insensitivity will take a long time to change.

Communication
The primary language used at Mirakle Couriers is Indian Sign Language (ISL). All organisation 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. Communication between Mirakle field agents and branch staff during the day is done via SMS text messaging. Text messaging has been a wonderful technological advancement for the deaf, allowing them the unprecedented ability to communicate over long distances. This also allows the management team members or the branch to broadcast information to all agents whether they are at home or on the field. This mode of communication has been very effective and essential to our productivity. All of our back office supervisors have email addresses and have been trained in the professional etiquette and productive techniques associated with email messaging. Email messaging is done in english. Why we do it
There is estimated to be about 8 million deaf adults in India. Of them only 67% of them find employment.

When they do find employment, for most of them its in the informal sector where they are badly paid, only seasonally hired and treated especially bad for being deaf. For deaf people in general, society has always been very harsh to them. Misunderstood and treated as sub-human, many of them have lived their entire life feeling oppressed, helpless and incapable of being part of society. Negative reinforcement: unemployability from big businesses and lack of support from government institutions, has made the world extremely bleak for many them. Many of them have grown up in an over-protected environment or have been badly treated for being physically different. It is our belief that to overcome this we must bring out their true human potential. Mirakle Couriers does so by employing them in a highly competitive and professionally demanding courier business where we push them to rise up to the occasion. Working with us they gain copious levels of confidence and eventually gain financial independence. The result is that many of them are able to go back home and support their families rather than having to be helplessly dependent on them. in December 2010 we were awarded the National Award for the Empowerment of People With Disabilities handed by the Ministry of Social Justice and Empowermen Awards

2010 National Award for the Empowerment of People With Disablities A distinguished award given by the President of India, Pratibha Devisingh Patil, for our efforts to empower the deaf through meaningful employment. We are most proud of this award, as our recognition has reached a national level. 2009 Hellen Keller Award Role Model Supporter of Increased Employment Opportunities for Disabled People. Individuals from within and outside the disability sector who have contributed substantially to the cause of promoting employment opportunities for disabled people over an extended period of time. 2009 Echoing Green Fellowship To accelerate social change, Echoing Green invests in and supports outstanding emerging social entrepreneurs to launch new organizations that deliver bold, high-impact solutions. Through a two-year fellowship program, we help our network of visionaries develop new solutions to societys most difficult problems.

Media Articles
MC #4 on Springwise Top 20 Business Ideas & Opportunities for 2011 Jan 2011 Frontline Magazine (hindu on net) Mirakle Workers Jan 2011 Indian Express A Packet of Hope Nov 2010 Youth Leader India Employment for the differently-abled Oct 2010 Dutiee, peak into social innovation A Courier Service Run By the Deaf Oct 2010 Beyond Profit photo of the week Sept 2010 DNA Mumbai A company that sends out a message Jul 2010 Pagal Guy A day at a courier company staffed by deaf people May 2010 The Better India Career Haven for the Deaf Apr 2010 Business Outlook India Mumbai Miracle Aug 2009 Facts & information

90% of all deaf parents have hearing children.

India has one of the highest deaf populations in the world with approximately 6% of the population suffering some kind of hearing loss. Four out of 1,000 children in India are born deaf. Alexander Graham Bell, whose own mother and wife were deaf, invented the telephone. It is estimated that 90% of deaf adults who were deaf as children use Sign Language, and most of them learned it at schools for the deaf. Thomas Edison, the inventor of electricity was deaf. American Sign language is the third-largest foreign language in the U.S., out-ranked by Spanish and Italian. India celebrates the International Week for the Deaf in September, and September 26 is recognized as the Day of the Deaf in India. Frenchman, Abb Charles-Michel de lpe founded the worlds first public school for deaf in Paris in the 18th Century. Famous German composer and pianist, Beethovens hearing began to deteriorate in his twenties. Even after he became completely deaf, he continued to compose music. Gallaudet University in the U.S. is the worlds only university with courses and services specifically designed to accommodate deaf and hard of hearing students. The University was founded in 1864.

Useful links-Annexure-II Association of Sign Language Interpreters http://www.signasli.org/ Disabled Rights Group http://www.disabledrightsgroup.org/ National Centre for Promotion of Employment for Disable People http://www.ncpedp.org/ National Association of the Deaf http://www.nadindia.org/ World Association of Sign Language Interpreters http://www.wasli.org/ The Deaf Way Foundation http://www.thedeafway.org/home.html Disability News and Information Service http://www.dnis.org/ South East Asian Forum for Sound Hearing http://www.soundhearing.org/ Ali Yavar Jung National Institute for the Hearing Handicapped http://ayjnihh.nic.in/aw/default.asp/

Deaf Leaders http://www.deafleadersindia.org/ India Deaf News http://www.indiadeafnews.org/ FAQS:Annexure-I

Can deaf people talk?

Yes, some deaf people can talk. Some of them use sign language and dont use their voice. Other deaf people use their voice and sign language at the same time. Some just speak. At Mirakle we emphasise the use of Indian Sign Language (ISL) to communicate around the office.
How do people become deaf?

Loss of hearing can be caused by various factors; it can be either prenatal (from birth) or postnatal. Rubella virus (German measles), cytomegalovirus (CMV), toxoplasmosis, herpes or genetic factors can cause a child to be born deaf (pre-natal). Acquired deafness (postnatal) can be caused by many things including illness, accidental injury, infection like meningitis, measles and mumps, continuous or sudden exposure to excessive noise etc. Aging is a common cause for hearing loss. As a person grows older the mechanical parts of the ear for e.g. the ear drum and the ossicles wears out or get damaged, or the nerves may gradually deteriorate causing gradual hearing loss.
What are various types of Deafness?

Following are the types of hearing impairment:

Conductive deafness: Occurs when sound waves are not transmitted effectively through the outer and middle ear to the inner ear. This is commonly caused due to the fluid development in the middle ear. This form of deafness is also referred as Otitis Media with Effusion (OME), and glue ear in some countries. It is often of the mild form and temporary in nature (mostly), and can be treated in most cases. Sensori-neural deafness: Occurs when auditory nerves fails to carry sound waves to the brain primarily due to the abnormality of hair cells (functions) in cochlea. This form of deafness is commonly referred as nerve deafness. Sensori-neural deafness is permanent in nature. Mixed deafness: Occurs when a person experiences combination of conductive and sensori-neural hearing loss.

Source: www.deafchildworldwide.info

Is sign language universal all over the world?

No. There are different sign languages for different regions. There are some standardized national sign languages. In India the educated deaf community uses Indian Sign Language (ISL), in the uk it is British Sign Language (BSL) and in America it is American Sign Language (ASL). While some words are similiar there are also a lot of differences.
Can deaf people use the phone?

Yes, they can use a phone. They can use a TTY or TTD (telephone typewriter or telecommunications device) at home or on the road.
How do hearing aids help?

Hearing aids help some deaf people hear, but they dont work for everyone.
What is cochlear implant?

A cochlear implant is an automated device that a doctor surgically embeds in the bone behind the ear.