Profit with Purpose
There is a market of a hefty 200 million disabled people in India that could spell new growth opportunity for practically every company, product and service. Do business leaders have the smarts to snag it?
In a world where business growth has become a major challenge, it helps to keep an open mind. For example, could the disabled be a new growth market? Globally, according to World Health Organization estimates, 15% of the population experiences some form of impairment or disability[i]. In India, that translates to upwards of 200 million people with disabilities[ii]. It is a large market. And it has no less a weakness for high quality products and services than any other. They make good business bait. Dangle them and organizations should rush to create products and services that are specifically crafted for the disabled. Oddly, that is happening at a snail’s pace. Which, if you are a business organization, is not such a bad thing: It means that the opportunities to corner the people with disabilities market are right round the corner, up for grabs. A handful of smart and shrewd organizations—especially in the area of digital services—have woken up and begun to address the people with disabilities market.
Deep pockets and extensive influence
Let me first establish the depth of their pockets. Globally, people with disabilities together with their friends and family whom they influence, control US$8 trillion in annual disposable income[iii]. This is about 2.5 times India’s GDP (which is US$2.3 trillion), a fact that is difficult to scoff at. Figures specifically for India are not available, but the disposable income of people with disabilities here will be just as impressive (this, of course, is because disability is not related to demographic profiles).
This is how the “disabled + friends and family” equation works: When a person with disabilities begins to use and recommend a product or a service, friends and family tend to become loyal users of the same products and services. For example I have developed a liking, which now has grown to a consumer stickiness, to use services such as Uber for my intra-city mobility needs and Amazon for my online shopping. Apart from the incredible doorstep convenience that these digital services offer, these apps are easier to use with screen readers that people with vision disabilities (like me) use on their mobile and PC. I feel more comfortable using these services and my family and friends have naturally gravitated to them. They now pick these companies over the other options that they have, despite not being disabled and having the freedom to choose any other service. What’s more exciting is that these companies continue to move the needle for disability inclusion even in India. There is the case of Uber that launched UberASSIST and UberACCESS in Bengaluru, two services designed for people with disabilities. The services provide vehicles that are accessible to people with disabilities and feature ample space to fold and stow a wheelchair, drivers who are trained to care for the disabled (UberASSIST drivers are the highest rated) and insurance for the passenger in the event of an accident.
Making the world a better place (and making great business sense)
It’s the same with Vistara and Indigo. I prefer them because they understand the needs of the disabled better than others. It is true that every airline has wheelchair assistance for the disabled and for senior citizens with physical impairments. However, what is not evident to the regular traveller is that most of these airlines have personnel that accompany the passenger up to the departure gate and leave to conduct other duties. They return when the flight is ready to depart. In between, if I need to use the rest room or pick up a cup of coffee, it is impossible to do so. Vistara and Indigo are different. Their personnel stays with the passenger from the moment they enter the airport to the moment they are seated in the aircraft. Indigo has taken steps (well, in a manner of speaking) for the disabled that have a far-reaching impact. Frequent travellers will have noticed that the airline has totally done away with the step ladders that other airlines use to on board passengers. Indigo has replaced them with gently sloping ramps that are easy for senior citizens and for all other passengers to roll up their cabin luggage. The number of injuries caused while climbing up and down those normal steep stairs would have come down.
My personal favourite is Netflix. Like Uber and Amazon, Netflix is easy to use with screen readers. However, what’s more impressive is that they have brought audio description, a feature that describes movie scenes for the blind. Their international movies and series support this feature. They haven’t stopped here. Netflix’s originals made for India such as Lust Stories, Sacred Games, Love Per Square Foot have audio descriptions. By contrast no other cable or streaming service, including Prime Videos (owned by Amazon) and Hotstar (owned by Disney), support audio descriptions in India, despite the fact that their titles have these features enabled in other international markets.
Another emerging example from a related field is PVR cinemas. They have an Accessible Cinema Program for those with mobility, visual and hearing impairment. The cinema chain has assistive equipment (ramps, stair lifts, etc.) and wheelchair-friendly seats installed at 50 theatres across the country. It has special screenings for those with visual impairment, offering audio descriptions over a mobile app and sub titles for the hearing impaired. My friends and family invariably accompany me for these shows, giving PVR extra business.
The number of examples is growing. The National Institute of Open Schooling (NIOS) has a number of facilities for those with vision, speech impairment and locomotor disability that make it difficult for them to write exams[iv]. Paytm has modified its app to make it accessible for those with vision impairment through screen readers[v]. Big Bazaar has made over 140 of its stores wheelchair-friendly. It offers ramps and trial rooms, shopping assistants, and priority check outs for the disabled in addition to sign language videos for the hearing impaired[vi]. And, starting April 2019, families with adults or children on the autism spectrum across India have begun to enjoy Quiet Hour every Tuesday at select Big Bazaar stores.[vii]
What this means is that there is a healthy market for products and services designed for people with disabilities. Businesses in India are recognizing this. It comes as no surprise to see that following Uber, Ola Cabs was encouraged to make their app accessible, while Meru offers taxis for people with disabilities in association with Ezymov. Similarly, this has provided impetus to other niche services across the country. Bangalore already had KickStart[viii] and MI[ix] that are designed as a taxi service especially for the disabled, Goa has Freedom Cabs[x], Coimbatore has Sarathi[xi], and Mumbai has Ezymov[xii] and MobiCab[xiii].
The imperatives beyond business
It won’t be long before other airlines, cinema theatres, educational institutions, mobile applications, retail stores and businesses in other industries wake up and follow in the footsteps of the leaders, raising India to world-class levels. Tomorrow’s banks, healthcare centres, religious services, railways and government offices will all be re-designed with the disabled in mind.
There is good reason to believe this will happen—and the reason goes beyond the lure of disposable income, purchasing power and the commercial influence of people with disabilities on their friends and families.
Section 46 of The Rights of Persons with Disabilities Act 2016 [xiv] has made it mandatory for all establishments, (including private sector companies), to make services[xv] that they offer to the public at large disable-friendly with features such as accessible apps and websites as per standards, ramps in public buildings, toilets for wheel chair users, braille symbols and auditory signals in elevators, and proper signage. The law makes it mandatory for the implementation of these services by June 2019[xvi] (did you hear that date just whoosh past us?). Institutions that don’t comply will find the enforcement directorate knocking on their doors. And, if you think this idea is far-fetched, then ask businesses including Spicejet[xvii], Gold’s Gym [xviii]and most recently even Uber[xix], who saw interventions from government or courts. Each one of them has had to pay penalties for non-conformance, losing money and reputation — and missing out on business opportunity.
It won’t be long before the Indian government follows in the footsteps of Section 508 of the Rehabilitation Act of 1973 in the US. The act requires Federal agencies to make their electronic and information technology accessible to people with disabilities[xx]. The change in policy in the US has triggered a race between technology companies such as Microsoft, Apple, Amazon and Google to make their products accessible to people with disabilities. If their products are not accessible, they can’t do business with the government. The spill over of this simple policy change has been that there are more accessible products in the market that all consumers –including the elderly—across the world benefit from.
Large industries in India too will find regulatory and compliance norms changing in their areas of operations so that people with disabilities find better support. The change will come in the form of regulations that mandate government departments and government-funded projects to source products and services only from organizations that follow disability-friendly guidelines set for their industries.
As a society, we have always recognized the soft reasons for businesses being disabled-friendly. There is the advantage of positive PR and of attracting talent (that is easier to retain than the non-disabled). There is also the pressure from society that demands businesses do “the right things”. Now, the hard reasons such as access to a wider pool of customers, better products and improved revenue will drive organizations to think harder and act faster. The early initiatives will perhaps be around making digital applications and services more accessible to the disabled. In a digital-first world, this is a no-brainer. However, the bigger reason for doing this is that global best practices around digital-for-the-disabled have begun to emerge and are not difficult to emulate. Others will follow the Ubers and the Indigos of the world—driven by their inherent desire to be inclusive and serve a larger section of society.
Simple steps to inclusion
For business leaders the signals are obvious. They should begin by declaring inclusive business as a strategic / business imperative. They should put their might behind the initiative and ensure that teams across IT, HR, marketing, procurement etc are onboard. The company should have a no-tolerance policy for deviations and non-compliance. One of the stronger steps to take is to create user personas with disabilities and include them in core stakeholder groups, in functional group discussions and market studies. The suggestions, feedback and opinions emerging from these groups should become action items.
Businesses would do well to adopt universal design principles and standards for their offices, facilities and administrative processes, making accessibility a mandatory quality check criterion. Hiring a qualified accessibility expert would be an added advantage and signal the seriousness of intent. Lastly, businesses should hire the disabled and make them the champions of product and service change within the organization. After this, everything else falls in place automatically.
The commitment to inject disabled-friendly business practices need not have its roots in social “do-gooding” or CSR-related regulatory compulsions. It can have its origins in hard-nosed business thinking: Recent research in the US has shown that disabled-friendly organizations on average had achieved 28% higher revenue and twice the net income of their industry peers between 2015 and 2018[xxi]. If ever there was a way to achieve profit with purpose, this would be it.
[i] https://www.worldbank.org/en/topic/disability
[ii] The Ministry of Statistics and Programme Implementation, Government of India, will have us believe that 2.21% of India’s population is disabled (see http://mospi.nic.in/sites/default/files/publication_reports/Disabled_persons_in_India_2016.pdf) but it should be obvious that India cannot have such variance with global numbers; among the reasons for the variance are the definition of disability used to create the records and the methodology of the surveys.
[iii] https://www.rod-group.com/sites/default/files/2016%20Annual%20Report%20-%20The%20Global%20Economics%20of%20Disability.pdf
[iv] https://www.nios.ac.in/media/documents/PWD/provisionforlwd.pdf
[v] https://english.manoramaonline.com/news/campus-reporter/2019/01/27/paytm-operations-get-easier-for-visually-impaired.html
[vi] https://www.afaqs.com/news/story/54683_As-Big-Bazaar-makes-over-140-stores-wheelchair-friendly
[vii] https://www.bigbazaar.com/quiethours-on-tuesday
[viii] http://www.kickstartcabs.com/
[ix] http://mobility-india.org/programmes/education/taxi-for-wheel-chair-users/
[x] https://www.facebook.com/FreedomCab/
[xi] http://www.swargafoundation.org/sarathi-mobility-redefined/
[xiv] Section 46 of the RPWD Act provides that all service providers, whether Government or private, are required to adhere to the rules on accessibility within a period of 2 (two) years (that is on or before 15-June-2019) from the date of notification (15-June-2017) of such rules.
[xv] Section 2 (x) of RPWD Act defines “public facilities and services” as all forms of delivery of services to the public at large, including housing, educational and vocational trainings, employment and career advancement, shopping or marketing, religious, cultural, leisure or recreational, medical, health and rehabilitation, banking, finance and insurance, communication, postal and information, access to justice, public utilities, transportation;
[xvi] http://www.indiaenvironmentportal.org.in/files/Rights%20of%20Persons%20with%20Disabilities%20Act%202016%20Supreme%20Court%20Order.pdf
[xvii] https://scroll.in/latest/808038/spicejet-to-pay-differently-abled-jeeja-ghosh-rs-10-lakh-for-de-boarding-her-and-lacking-sensitivity
[xix] https://gadgets.ndtv.com/apps/news/uber-asked-by-centre-to-act-against-drivers-who-harassed-disability-rights-activist-2064157
[xx] https://www.fcc.gov/general/section-508-rehabilitation-act
[xxi] https://www.fastcompany.com/90311742/why-companies-who-hire-people-with-disabilities-outperformed-their-peers