With inputs from Rema Nagarajan

Kalyani Khona came up with the idea of launching a matchmaking agency while trying to identify her true calling in life. But after doing some research, the young Mumbaikar decided to make her agency a more specialized one — by catering to the differently abled.“With over 40 million disabled people in India, only 5% or less get married,” says Khona, who launched Wanted Umbrella on July 1. For an annual fee of Rs 3,000, the agency arranges curated events and group dinners where singles can be more relaxed instead of the conventional ‘chai’ meetings.Khona is part of a small but growing breed of young entrepreneurs who are setting up businesses to cater to people with disability. The last few years have seen a range of services come up — from matrimonial agencies and customized cars to lifestyle magazines. “Persons with Disabilities ( PWD ) were always a market but businesses addressed them as a charitable model. Now that disabled people have better education, they want to improve their standard of living, and aspire for everything that other people have access to,” says Shilpi Kapoor, MD of BarrierBreak , a company which helps make educational institutions and technology companies disabled-friendly.Upasana Makati, who launched India’s first English lifestyle magazine in Braille last May, says that she realized that a magazine for the visually-impaired was long overdue. ‘White Print’, a monthly, covers everything from travel, food and Bollywood to music and politics and is priced at Rs 30. “I was doing a PR job but wanted to do something different, a venture I could connect with. That’s when I realized that there are plenty of magazines around but none for the visually impaired,” says Makati, who prints her magazine at the National Association for the Blind. Today, they print 300 copies a month and have a subscriber base across India. “People are getting more aware and sensitive, which is why you see a lot of young people taking the lead and launching businesses for the disabled,” she says.In Bangalore, 46-year-old Vidhya Ramasubban started Kickstart, a disabledfriendly cab service, last December.Though they have three vehicles at present, the service is already planning to expand. “We get three to four calls in a day. We started small but now hope to get 50 vehicles,” says Ramasubban, adding that Mphasis, an IT consultancy firm, helped her start the venture.Each car takes about a month to be modified. Currently, the majority of their clients are people who need to visit the hospital regularly — patients of strokes and spinal cord injury who need rehabilitation, and those who need to undergo dialysis. The percentage of working people who use the cab service for daily commute is still small. One of them is wheelchair-bound Deepa Maski, who no longer has to depend on her parents every time she wants to go shopping to a nearby mall. “The cars have ramps for wheelchairs and the seats are also detachable and can be converted into makeshift wheelchairs,” says Maski, 28.There are also a number of businesses across the country that customize cars for the differently abled. In Chennai, P Padmanabhan, owner of Mobility Aids Sales and Services, has modified more than 400 cars since he launched the company in 2004. Modifying a car for a wheelchair-bound person involves removing the pedals — clutch, brake and accelerator — from the floor and bringing them up to the level of the steering wheel. Padmanabhan, who is also wheelchair-bound, says it was his struggle to attain some level of mobility that inspired him to set up the business. “The majority of disabled people cannot afford cars,” says Padmanabhan who charges anywhere between Rs 12,000 to Rs 70,000, depending on the model of the vehicle and the degree of customization required. He is planning to slowly expand his business to other cities but says it will take time. “We are looking for dealers who are sensitive towards PWD and we’ll also train them to deal with these special customers,” says Padmanabhan.For the differently-abled, such services can be life-changing. “The ability to move, and commute can lift 50% of the depression of being disabled,” says Delhi-based Rajiv Virat, who drives a modified Maruti 800. Having lost mobility due to multiple sclerosis when he was just 17, Virat now plays tennis on wheels, has participated in the Delhi and Mumbai marathons and driven to Ladakh Khona is optimistic about the future of her business. “NGOs catering to their needs using limited funds was the best they ever got until now. But it is actually a niche and due to limited competition, the scope of profits and likelihood that the business will work out are higher,” she says. The bonus: changing the lives of people.