Divya Jain – Founder & CEO, Safeducate
If there is one field which finds it most difficult to shed the stereotypes attached to it, then it has to be the trucking segment. Interestingly that is exactly why Divya Jain could succeed where probably others could hardly make inroads into.
Divya Jain approached truckers minus any pre-conceived notions. She met them at the local dhabas in remote areas of Raipur, Ranchi or Bhubaneshwar, or by travelling in trucks or while training them.
And it paid off.
Born in 1983 into a business family, Ms. Divya comes from a conservative family. She found her mother as her first inspiration who was a calm yet determined lady to carry out a decision if it was made in earnest. An economics graduate from Delhi University, Ms. Divya earned her post-graduation in management from Cambridge University, and then finished her academics in 2005 after completing studying law from the London University.
“I was married in 2007 into a family where logistics and supply chain was the general atmosphere even at home. I found new inspiration in my father in law. I learnt from him that one must work on one’s dream even if it sounds audacious to others,” shares Ms. Divya.
It is no wonder that she founded Safeducate in 2007, as a subsidiary of the Rs. 2,000-crore supply chain and logistics entity Safexpress. Through, Safeducate, Ms. Divya wanted to skill the underprivileged people in vocational and diploma courses for supply chain employability.
She says: “I have grown up seeing my paternal grandfather working towards setting up units for manufacturing Jaipur Foot and making them accessible to the landmine victims. Social work is part of my psyche”, and that is exactly what she has gone on to embrace as her full-time passion. Her heart beats for the trucker community because she soon realized that no one appreciates their significance in our economy.
Thus was born her book ‘Horn Please’ on trucking in India. She explains, “The idea was to celebrate them, and talk about them. I interviewed about 4,500 truck drivers and almost none wanted their kids to be truck drivers because they are not respected, and there is no dignity of labor. No one cares about them or their hard life, or the fact that they are mostly on the road away from their families and dealing with constant pressures.”
She feels happy that ‘this platform is literally the first time where they have received some recognition’ because of one incident that she can never forget, “There was a driver who had gone to the contractor to get his payment but was made to sit outside the office in the sun for one whole day without even being offered water. Fed up, he went to the official and said ‘please make my payment, I have been sitting here the whole day… I am a human too’, to which the man replied ‘oh, I thought you were a truck driver’.”
Yet the beginnings of turning her dream into reality was met with hardcore stereotypical conditioned responses from her target group, “Their typical reactions were like where has she come from and why. It was made extremely clear to me that this was not my space. And many times, the drivers would be looking for someone older to come in along with me.”
Safeducate tied up with NSDC in 2013 and the first Safeducate Container School was launched in July 2015 by the Honorable Prime Minister, Mr. Narendra Modi.
Ms. Divya plans to train and skill up to 70,000 youth in 10 States in 2018-19 for careers in logistics, supply chain and e-commerce sectors. She adds further, “Most need to work to add to their family incomes. We give them short-term training for 2-3 months and they get on-job training for 2-3 more months where they receive stipends too.” Green Dost is her recent laudable initiative – where Safeducate ties up with Safexpress – which gives eligible drivers a truck, necessary training and grooming in exchange for a nominal security amount.
For her heartfelt efforts, Ms. Divya received the prestigious Young Woman Achiever Award at ASEAN in early 2018. It is a wonderful contrast from the times when ‘it was always implied to me not to bother my pretty head about finances but I realized that business is run only through finances’ and the rest has been up to her to prove her worth to anybody who cared for it.
– Sarada Vishnubhatla