chennai when bharathi veerath who was hailed as ubers first female driver was found dead it struck a hard blow at cabs hoping to hire women drivers however with safety first as their motto organisations like delhibased startup women on wheels started by azad foundation are looking to turn their women drivers streetsmart apart from learning to drive and handle curves with elan women drivers at azad arealso trained in martial arts and conflict management we teach them selfdefense womens rights legal rights and give them first aidtraining its not just about imparting skills but also helping them overcome their personal difficulties like daycare domestic violence etc said nilanjana sengupta research and advocacy director azad foundationone of their drivers begum who joined womenonly cab service sakha in delhi had to learn personal skills too to cope with the rigours of the countrys capital male drivers can get territorial especially when they see a woman drive so we train our women on handling conflicts said sengupta azads women on wheels programme has so far trained hundreds of women who have gone onto work for professional cab services in jaipur indore and kolkatachennaibased utoo is in the process of screening and training about 20 women drivers at startup womencabscom womens safety was the sole reason to enter this market in 2011 i was studying at iimbengaluru when i read about the pune rape case and i decided to start a womens only cab service said shailendra singh founder womencabscomwe have a rape victim among our drivers for her to overcome her fear of men and roads and become a cab driver was an immense journey post a sixmonth training programme during induction they have a threemonth onthejob training to improve knowledge of routes navigation and use of technology said singhmost of our girls come from difficult backgrounds we have single parents widows and women who have faced domestic violence we counsel motivate and empower them today our drivers earn double what their male counterparts do said singh another success story was a migrant worker we hired from teaching her kannada to introducing her to bengalurus culture recognise landmarks it was a rigorous exercise but we pulled it off he addedmeru which has a pink taxi fleet with women drivers uses them for intracity travel alone for limited number of hours drivers are armed with pepper spray cans and training in selfdefence drivers can also hit emergency buttons to alert call centres in case of any difficulty whether it is a flat tyre or dealing with a drunk passenger said a meru executive but not everyone succeeds in this niche space for instance angelcabscom which was started in 2015 had to shut shop soon after it ran into operational difficulties both meru cabs and uber who employ women drivers did not divulge the number of women drivers they had on board