One Roadside Emergency Changed Everything: How an Entrepreneur Is Creating Opportunities for Women in India's Auto Service Industry

For the past few decades, the automotive service industry has mostly been a man's world in India. The development has been slow especially regarding diversity in this sector.

For Vimal Singh SV, Founder & CEO of ReadyAssist, the beginning of his venture has not been a normal one. It dates back to the time when he lost a close friend in a car accident in 2015 because help did not reach him on time. This event made him think: if help could come sooner, and thus ReadyAssist walked into this world in 2016.

An MS graduate in Software Engineering from BITS Pilani, he began his entrepreneurial journey after gaining valuable experience with global organisations such as Wipro, KPMG, and Tech Mahindra. This exposure helped him develop deep expertise in technology, consulting, and scalable operations, which later became the foundation for building ReadyAssist.

He started with a team of three people in Bengaluru with the vision of organizing India's fragmented roadside assistance ecosystem through technology. Today, the company operates in all the states and territories and has nearly 11,000+ partners and more than 6,500 tow trucks.

However, for Vimal, the construction of a nationwide vehicle care platform has not been his end goal. It has been seen that as India's automotive industry has evolved with the use of electric vehicles, various technologies, and the shifts in customer expectations that come with it, Another challenge has come into being in the form of the widening skills gap in the industry and the absence of women in technical service positions.That thought led to the launch of Project Shakthi - a project meant to provide women with meaningful career opportunities in the automobile service sector.

The aim of the project is to train about 300 women across multiple cities in the beginning, giving them technical skills necessary, practical experience, and career pathways that would allow women to earn more than ₹50,000 monthly. Other than technical skills, Project Shakthi aims to challenge the stereotypes related to gender in automobile service and improve inclusiveness in the field.

Technology has been one of the most important elements of the growth process at ReadyAssist. Through its in-house platforms, AI-enabled systems, and a 24x7 multi-lingual command center, ReadyAssist has turned roadside assistance into a systematic data-based business that can service standard and electric vehicles alike. Over the years, it has not only been involved in roadside assistance, towing, diagnostics, and fitment but also expanded its business to adjacent vehicle care solutions, such as claims, retrofitment, and training of EV specialists.

However, despite its technological advancements, ReadyAssist's latest focus extends beyond technology. Through Project Shakthi, the company is creating meaningful career opportunities for women and making the vehicle care industry more inclusive.

Vimal claims that bringing more women into the automotive service industry is not just a solution for the problem of talent shortage, but it is about making what has always been inaccessible to 50% of the population available. In the age of transforming vehicle care, Vimal thinks about companies needing people not only with technical expertise, but also with diverse backgrounds.

As of now, the journey of ReadyAssist goes beyond building a nationwide roadside assistance network. Rather it embodies the larger vision of transforming the ecosystem of mobility in India into a more resilient technology-driven ecosystem ensuring that the automotive service of the future will be not only innovative in nature but also full of opportunities.

As India's automotive landscape continues to transform, initiatives like Project Shakthi demonstrate that the future of vehicle care will be shaped not only by technological innovation but also by creating meaningful opportunities for people.