Neelam Jain, Founder & CEO of PeriFerry
“Due to social stigma and discrimination, a major portion of the transgender communities in India are forced into begging or sex work,” explains Neelam Jain, Founder and CEO of PeriFerry. Often times, transgender people are rejected and denied employment opportunities. Those who are employed often earn far too little.
That’s why Neelam set out on a mission to create opportunities for transgender individuals through job training and placement, as well as LGBTQIA+ sensitization programs for employers. Her company, PeriFerry, was founded in 2017 and has so far placed over 160 transgender people into dignified jobs.
PeriFerry’s residential training program, REVIVE, provides training for transgender individuals in areas such as computer literacy, English communication, soft skills, and interview preparation. In partnering with corporate businesses such as ANZ Bank and ThoughtWorks, PeriFerry has been able to host up to 40 participants in the program at a time. The vast majority of the participants receive job placements in a variety of companies, like Amazon, Accenture, Walmart, ANZ, and Vodafone to name a few.
PeriFerry is one of the startups participating in Upaya’s 2020 Accelerator Program designed to help early-stage businesses prepare to grow and create jobs that lift marginalized communities out of extreme poverty. We’re pleased to share out Q&A with Neelam in which we asked her more about what inspired her to start PeriFerry and the advice she’d give to other entrepreneurs.
Q: What are the key problems your company aims to address?
“Due to social stigma and discrimination, a major portion of the transgender communities in India are forced into begging and/or sex work. At PeriFerry, we want to change this picture and provide equal mainstream livelihood opportunities to the transgender community and uplift the socio-economic standing of transgender individuals.”
Q: How did you become so passionate about this problem?
“It was a long journey, and it did not happen overnight. I never imagined that I would actually do something like this. However, if I have to go back and pinpoint something in particular, I would highlight me meeting and spending more than three hours with a transgender woman named ‘Uma’. This discussion helped me understand the community during the event and inspired me to take it up to the next level. I talked with more than a few people from the transgender community and heard stories like members being raped as sex workers and more.“
Q: What kept you going in your journey of starting PeriFerry?
“The first discussion with Uma, quitting my former job, meeting the transgender community, and living with them - all inspired me. Sathyam Cinemas, one of our first clients, once conducted a program called ‘Hack for Social Good’. I pitched my idea of helping the trans community there. Although I lost due to the event being tech based, I received a lot of guidance and inspiration from there. This was 5 months before I officially started PeriFerry.
At home, I receive tremendous support from my family which has inspired me to do something that genuinely makes a difference.”
Q: What has been your greatest accomplishment to date?
“The team that is in place at PeriFerry—and their stickiness and loyalty—is the greatest achievement. Most of them came along the way and supported without any questions about salary or working hours.
REVIVE, our Residential Corporate Training Program, with the ANZ Bank is what I would call PeriFerry’s biggest accomplishment so far. It transitioned the organisation to a level where we could place multiple candidates in one go. Prior to this, we were just placing one person at a time. Also, to me, conducting a 25-batch residential training with 90% placements is a big achievement. REVIVE 2.0 with ThoughtWorks was conducted in Feb 2020 and was also a major success.”
Q: What has been your biggest lesson you’ve learned till date?
“Do not take things too seriously. Whether good or bad, do not provide more attention than it requires. This has been my biggest learning till date. I have learned to take things as they come.”
Q: What has been your biggest challenge so far?
“From day one till now, the biggest challenge has been gaining the trust of the community. For so many decades, the transgender community has been exploited in so many ways by different people and organisations. It took us at least a year and a half to build some sort of rapport with the community. Even now, we are not completely there. We still need to do a lot more to understand the trans communities across the geographies. For example, communities in Delhi are different from communities in Chennai.”
Q: How do you approach problem-solving on the ground or in your day-to-day operations?
“I believe in actioning things at the earliest possible opportunity. There’s little point in taking time to ideate or spending too much time on a particular problem. As an organisation, we have built the culture of actioning things immediately with Plan A, B, or C. We try to implement a solution on the same day and learn fast.”
Q: What has been your experience in working with the jobholders and their community?
“The experience has been really good, and we learn something new every day. We don’t see ourselves as working on just providing a job to our candidates, but we see it as changing the life of the beneficiary and creating a spiral effect on the community itself. Job placement alone is not enough. It is about placement in dignified mainstream jobs with decent salaries that ensure sustainability. That is what should be the aim.
A highlight that comes to mind is Rohan, a trans man candidate of PeriFerry. He was placed with Walmart, and he has absolutely excelled there and was awarded the ‘Best Performer of the Month’. He was also fully compensated for his medical transition surgery by Walmart.”
Q: What is your vision for your company? What is your vision for India or the world at large?
“PeriFerry envisions a better socio-economic standing of the community in 10 years. Current issues like social stigma, discrimination, and economic issues should all cease to be a major problem within a decade.
It is a fact that the overall social view and perspective towards the LGBT community is extremely narrow within India. It is thought of as being not inherent to our culture and is labeled as a behaviour stemming from western influence. We believe people should be able to live and be how they want to be.”
Q: What advice would you give to other entrepreneurs entering the space?
“I think the biggest mistake people commit is that often they spend a lot of time on the fringes of the idea and not getting on the ground and executing it. I would advise to start small but start with whatever you have and start today. If anything, always follow the MVP way of starting up.”
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