HYDERABAD: Hyderabad gets its first inclusive ‘Hope in a Cup’ cafe, run by four entrepreneurs from the queer community. Located at Sri Sai Enclave, VIP Hills, Madhapur, the cafeteria is a brainchild of women and transgender activist Deepthi Sirla, who is also the project manager at Nirmaan. The non-profit organisation works in the fields of education, skill training and development, and providing relief measures in natural calamities. The organisation will support the cafe for six months and after that, the ownership will be transferred to the LGBTQIA+ members running it presently. The NGO will continue to provide its ongoing support and resources as needed.
“After doing a skill training project, we realised that merely imparting skills is not sufficient,” said Deepthi Sirla. “Most members of the queer community need opportunities to earn money from that skill, which are not there in the social sphere we live in. They at least need a kickstarter to establish their own businesses. For example, if you’re learning to tailor, you need machines and other materials to start your business. They don’t have that kind of financial support. Hence, I thought entrepreneurship would be the best way to help them and transform their journeys into something meaningful. It would make a greater impact than simply abandoning them after training is done,” she added.
The initiative is supported by the NGO and funded by a company named Synopsys through its CSR project. “Running a cafeteria is a mainstream business and not many queer people are engaged in it. Even if they are, they have to hide their identities because of the fear of losing clients. In order to empower a stigmatised community, we need to break the stigma first. Most people have this perception that queer communities do not have the capacity to do something worthwhile. I wanted to change that perception,” said Sirla.
The women were selected from a training project undertaken by the non-profit, wherein they were trained in some basic aspects of marketing management, cooking, licensing, registration and so on. They stood out as they showed some entrepreneurial skills. “Finding a queer-friendly space in the city is actually quite difficult. I came to the city six years back and have been part of the community for the past three years. I have faced difficulty in getting space for queer-inclusive meet-ups and residential places as well,” said Kaamna (name changed), one of the cafe managers.
“The owners or neighbours were not ready to give us any places. They were scared that some issues might arise. The financial part of it was equally challenging as we were not able to get any form of support even from the banks or private lenders. Then Deepthi came up with this proposal to train a few people from the community in cafe management and other things. They trained us in making continental dishes and some mocktails,” she added. Even with the support of the organisation, the project saw similar difficulties.
“The first thing was to convince the donor that this project could be done because they had no trust in the community. Usually, corporates do skill training or government school adoption, infrastructure projects and all but they never venture into Equality and Diversity Projects (EDP) because they think it is too risky and the cost per beneficiary is usually high in such projects,” said Sirla.
“This means that they would be interested in investing Rs 20 lakh to train about 200 people but if you are talking about investing Rs 20 lakh in just four people, it’s not well received. Another challenge was to find a space. It took us two months to find this space,” she added.
“Finally Synopsys agreed because it has been partnering with us for a long time. This is the first time that they are doing a diversity and inclusion project,” said Sirla.
Kaamna, who is an MBA graduate already has some experience in marketing. One of her co-workers used to run a food outlet at DLF. “We are happy with the response we are getting. Although we are still in the process of getting a license, I hope to see 20-40 customers per day. Just as they enter, they see the rainbow mural on the wall and ask questions, which helps create awareness about LGBTQ communities. We are also planning to keep some literature like books and magazines and host queer-centric events to increase knowledge and awareness about LGBTQIA+ communities,” she said. The cafeteria serves continental food with combos priced at Rs 377, symbolic of the decriminalisation of homosexuality. There was also a drag performance by Patruni Sastry recently.
Creating awareness is important as “the first thing people usually visualise is a transgender person, just as you mention LGBTQ,” said Deepthi. “In their schema, a transperson is visualised as a hijra, as someone who would be into begging or sex work. About 20 to 25 people turned us down when we were looking for a place for this project. One person, who was seemingly well-educated, tried to misbehave by sending an inappropriate text message. Even for our other projects, we face such difficulties. We needed a place for our skill training program and people who owned it wanted us to pay more rent than usual,” she said.
For safety and security purposes, the cafe has CCTV cameras installed and has a zero-tolerance policy against harassment and discrimination. “We are ready to take it legally if needed. The Nirmaan management is going to support them in whatever form required,” she concluded.