It was the year 2009. Shravani Pawar, then 23, was on a unique mission. To recruit rural women for her new start-up, Safe Hands 24X7. The idea was to train them as security guards. “ ‘How is this possible?’ was the first question I would get,” she recalls.
During her first visits to villages, she couldn’t get the honest views of women as they were masked by the opinions of menfolk in their families. Villagers and neighbours also advised them against crossing the ‘line’. Uniform was the first hurdle. Many families did not want to see their women working in a city in men’s clothes.
Published 01 January 2020, 07:23 IST