Revathi Roy, who has pioneered Asia’s first women’s taxi service, is a serial entrepreneur who has converted her passion for driving, into a business. With job creation as her mission, Roy has facilitated the training of thousands of women as four-wheeler drivers, helping them secure financial independence.

 

Her first two ventures, Forsche and Viira Cabs, were both all-women cab services. Her present venture, Hey Deedee, has created an all-women courier service. All the young women in the group, who deliver parcels on two-wheelers for both e-commerce companies and private individuals, are from underprivileged families.

 

Amazon has just signed a deal with Hey Deedee to use the services of one lakh delivery women trained by Hey Deedee in the next five years. Currently, about 3,000 women are undergoing training and over 200 are already on the road.

 

Roy, a winner of multiple awards including Niti Aayog’s Women Transforming India Award 2016, is soon launching Hey Deedee Cabs and has signed a contract with Uber to train 50,000 women drivers in the country.

 

Her education has nothing to do with her entrepreneurial ventures, said Roy, who holds a master’s degree in economics. “I started the first company as I have always been very fond of driving and always wanted to do something with driving. So, I thought of converting this passion into a business, which became a real project for me,” she said.

 

On her first mission to empower women as cab drivers, she said, “I realised there was potential, but I didn’t know how I was going to do that. I decided to contact an advertising agency to help me create a brand. And thus started Asia’s first all-women cab service, which we called ‘Forsche,’ pronounced ‘for she’.”

 

She exited Forsche in 2009 and started Viira Cabs. Two years later she quit that business and co-founded Zaffiro Learning, followed by Hey Deedee, both in 2016. Zaffiro Learning is a training firm that provides training to girls before they join Hey Deedee.

 

“Every entrepreneur has an element of complete insanity when they start a business — because they start with just an idea. To develop that idea and execute it is a marathon task,” she added.