PeriFerry: Ferrying Transgender People from the Edges to the Mainstream

PeriFerry is a pioneering social enterprise working toward creating sustainable livelihood opportunities and inclusive workplaces for transgender persons in India. Originally located in Chennai, Tamil Nadu, India, PeriFerry has upskilled 320 transgender persons and sensitized more than 30,000 employees about their inclusion in the workplace. PeriFerry’s founder and chief executive officer, Neelam Jain, does not believe in an extravagant showcase of effort. Instead, since she founded PeriFerry in 2017, her approach was that when transgender persons wished to transform their lives, they could locate and reach out to PeriFerry via the internet and various social media platforms like LinkedIn, X, Facebook, or Instagram or meet on-ground community representatives. But Jain is looking forward to PeriFerry’s next five years and contemplating whether this approach will be relevant to scale social impact. Alternatively, Jain is considering adopting a proactive stance in reaching out to transgender people. This could involve extending its geographical coverage to include other cities in India and introducing a diverse range of services to provide holistic support for transgender persons. The new approach will allow PeriFerry to scale wide by reaching out to more trans people who are dispersed in various geographical locations in India who find it difficult to locate PeriFerry due to a lack of technological amenities. But Jain would also have to figure out the resources and capabilities required to scale its social impact. Jain must determine which strategy PeriFerry should pursue in the next 2-3 years.

The case can be used for students of both undergraduate and graduate degree programs. The case may be used in introductory courses on social entrepreneurship and organizational behaviour. More specifically, for the social entrepreneurship course, this case can be taught in modules where scaling or social impact scaling is discussed. Similarly, for the organizational behaviour course, this case can be used to cover topics that revolve around individual-level concepts like personality, values, and motivation theories. Additionally, the instructor can also use this case to discuss diversity in organizations and LGBTQIA+ diversity in the workplace. The case deals with a social enterprise’s decision to scale deep or to scale wide to create social impact. After working through the case and answering assignment questions, students will be able to do the following:<br><br><ul><li>Understand the meaning of social enterprises and how they are different from purely commercial entrepreneurial organizations.</li><li>Analyze social enterprises’ various strategies for scaling social impact (deep or wide).</li><li>Discuss organizational capabilities and apply theoretical frameworks for scaling social impact.</li><li>Comprehend the challenges that a social entrepreneur faces while scaling the social impact of social enterprise.</li></ul>

• Transgender people
• Social enterprise
• Scaling social impact
• Diversity and inclusion
• SCALERS model
• PeriFerry