http://www.bbc.

com/news/magazine-26260978

There are no satisfactory alternative methods of maintaining feminine hygiene for the average
Indian woman; as a result, women often endure embarrassment, infection and loss of workdays
due to the negative social stigma and discomfort associated with monthly menstruation.
Reproductive tract infections are 70% greater among women who lack access to hygienic
supplies. As many as 31% of adult women in India note a drop in their productivity levels when
they menstruate, resulting in missing an average of 2.2 days of work each month.
Understanding the Market
Although they are not yet the national standard, sanitary napkins are being perceived as more of
a necessity and less of a luxury in India. Urban women make up 20% of the countrys sanitary
napkin market. In 2008, there were 96 million women in urban India and, at that time, it was
projected that that number would increase by 17% to 1.2 billion women in 2013. With this
predicted population growth, the sanitary napkin market could potentially be valued at as
much as USD$365m in 2013, up from US$166.1m in 2008.
Indias sanitary napkin market has significant profit potential. The demand for such products is
stable; purchases are recurring and not subject to normal business cycles. Historically, the price
of feminine hygiene products have been relatively expensive, but that is changing as small and
large businesses enter the market and make an accessible, lower-priced offering to a wider
consumer base. How can the market continue to grow and increase accessibility and awareness
of feminine hygiene?
Jayaashree Industries
Traditionally, multinational corporations (MNCs) have dominated the manufacturing of feminine
hygiene products. It is important to note, however, that the machinery used in manufacturing is
expensive to procure and maintain. There is also the additional cost of the raw materials required
to make the sanitary napkins. Although MNCs have achieved economies of scale that benefit
consumers in relatively richer markets, the bottom of the pyramid (BoP) consumer is left out.
There is need for affordable, quality feminine hygiene products.
Inventor Arunachalam Muruganantham at Jayaashree Industries, a Coimbatore-based company,
has found a solution with his mini sanitary napkin-making machine. He was inspired to design
and invent the mini machine after learning from his wife that if she, along with all his other
female family members, bought sanitary napkins, they would have to reduce the monthly milk
budget significantly. The low-cost mini machines design is based on small-scale production.
Large-scale production of sanitary napkins requires as much as US$782,000 as an initial
investment. However, Jayaashrees mini machine can be purchased for about US$1,680. It is
estimated that the mini machine can make 120 sanitary napkins per hour.
The affordability of the mini machine presents a unique opportunity to expand availability of this
necessity while also increasing local employment opportunities. Entrepreneurs, or even local
female-led self-help groups, can acquire the machine and set up a business to sell in underserved
markets, thus creating more employment locally. Such groups can also address the social issues
that constrain the uptake of sanitary napkins. Jayaashree notes on its website that a sanitary
napkin manufacturing business can employ up to 10 women.
With our low-cost technology innovation, women will not only be able to get access to
affordable, hygienic, eco-friendly sanitary pads, declares Muruganantham on the Ashoka
Changemakers website. But most importantly, [women] participate in the entire lifecycle of the
technology development process not just as users, but also as technology designers,
manufacturers, marketers!
Jayaashrees mini machine has scooped up a host of accolades, including the National Grassroots
Innovation Award by Indian President Pratibha Patil on behalf of the National Innovation
Council on November 18, 2009.
Government Efforts
Clearly, social entrepreneurship and innovation are hard at work to help underserved women.
But what steps has the Government of India undertaken to alleviate shortfalls in awareness and
accessibility of feminine hygiene products?
In 2010, the Ministry of Health and Family Welfare revealed that it was working on a scheme to
provide rural women living below the poverty line with free sanitary napkins. The plan involves
supplying 100 sanitary napkins per person per year to 200 million women at a budget of
US$45m over a three-to-six month period.
When reports of the new sanitary napkin scheme were published, two immediate issues became
apparent. One concern was that such a scheme would stifle innovation from enterprises like
Jayaashree who, though a small player, was providing a necessary social service, inspiring the
same spirit of grassroots innovation in local communities and empowering women to take
control over their own health. Effectively, the scheme was heavily subsidizing MNC production
of sanitary napkins. How can this sort of market environment encourage smaller-scale
innovation? Promoting affordability of sanitary napkins again falls to the wayside when that
should be the focal point for improving the health and hygiene of women irrespective of whether
they live in rural or urban India.
It ultimately should not matter who is producing low-cost, quality sanitary napkins, but the
potential of this market cannot be ignored, especially since it sees stable demand. There is
tangible entrepreneurial opportunity in the feminine hygiene market that can allow the average
poor person to start a business, as well as be a tool for awareness for herself and her community.
Government subsidization of MNC offerings may have short-term benefits, but over the long
run, it can hurt the income-generating prospects for many lower-income people.
The second concern to arise from the scheme is its limited scope. It is true that rural women have
more restricted access to sanitary napkins, but this issue of accessibility and affordability also
exists for lower-income women living in cities. In eastern India alone, 83% of families say that
they cannot afford sanitary napkins. The goal should really be universal access for women
throughout India, and the new scheme does not promise that.
Even though it may have positive short-term outcomes, the scheme does not address a longer-
term vision of improving the quality of life for women across the country going forward. There
is no publicly available data to illustrate how successful the program has been thus far.
The Indian government has, however, learned to expand its thinking with regard to feminine
hygiene in the past year since the unveiling of the free sanitary napkin scheme. Current data
shows that inadequate menstrual protection causes girls aged 12 to 18 to miss around five days of
school per month, or approximately 50 school days per year. More startling is that around 23%
of girls drop out of school once they start menstruating. In July 2011, a new government
program will be launched to improve menstrual hygiene among adolescent girls. The goal is to
reach 15 million adolescent girls between the ages of 10 and 19 in 152 districts across the
country. The program will first be launched in Gujarat, Maharashtra and southern India. It is
estimated that only 20% of adolescent girls can afford even a single sanitary napkin, but under
this program, a pack of six sanitary napkins will be sold to each girl at schools for INR 1
(~US$0.02). With this new program, accessibility and affordability, as well as hygiene
education, are confronted head-on.
Conclusion
As the feminine hygiene market expands, it cannot be assumed that MNCs will be the primary
purveyors of sanitary napkins to the BoP consumer. The general consumer culture of India
favors smaller kirana stores more than large Walmart-style stores. What Jayaashree Industries
has done is make manufacturing and usage of sanitary napkins more accessible, and this in itself
is a huge feat. Since India has become a hub for social entrepreneurship and innovation, it is fair
to assume that Jayaashree will not be the only player in the market. And if government programs
can be interpreted as signals, the Government of India is also catching on to the depth of
womens issues, as well as the relatively simple solutions that can be invested in to help women
help themselves and thereby improve the quality of life for girls and women in the generations to
come.
This story originally appeared in the June 2011 edition of the Searchlight South Asia newsletter
created by Intellecap for the Rockefeller Foundation.
The opinions expressed on the Searchlight South Asia site are solely those of the authors and do
not necessarily reflect the positions of the Rockefeller Foundation.
Photo credit: Jayaashree Industries


The hindu:
The Union Health and Family Welfare Ministry on Tuesday approved a scheme for providing
highly subsidised sanitary napkins to adolescent girls in the rural areas to promote menstrual
hygiene. The scheme, to be launched in 150 districts across the country in the first phase, will
cost Rs.150 crore for the current financial year.
Approved by the Mission Steering Group the highest decision-making body of the National
Rural Health Mission, at its sixth meeting here, the scheme envisages covering 1.5-crore girls in
the age group of 10-19 years every month. Of this, the approximate number of APL girls is 105
lakh while that of the BPL category is 45 lakh. The napkins will be supplied to the below poverty
line (BPL) girls at a nominal cost of Re.1 per pack of six while those girls living above poverty
line (APL) will have to pay Rs.5 per pack.
Limited access
In India, menstruation and menstrual practices are clouded by taboos and socio-cultural
restrictions for women as well as adolescent girls. Limited access to safe sanitary products and
facilities is believed to be one of the reasons for constrained school attendance, high dropout
rates and ill health due to infection.
Tamil Nadu, Haryana, Bihar, Rajasthan and Puducherry have already taken similar initiatives to
promote menstrual hygiene among adolescent girls.
The 150 districts identified in the first phase include 30 from the four southern States,
Maharashtra and Gujarat and 120 from northern, central and the north-eastern States. In the first
year, the Centre will procure the napkins and supply these to the States that will in turn send
these to Accredited Social Health Activists (ASHA) in the districts for distribution on a monthly
basis or to the schools which will become distribution points for students.
As an incentive, ASHA will get one pack free every month in addition to Rs.50 per meeting she
holds on a Sunday for creating awareness regarding menstrual hygiene among girls.
Subsequently, States can choose to involve self-help groups for manufacturing and marketing
sanitary napkins. At least 50 districts with a strong network of SHGs will be involved in the
manufacture of napkins in the first phase itself. The ASHAs will procure sanitary napkins from
the sub-centre for which she will be given Rs.300 from the untied fund. Each month, ASHA will
replenish the imprest fund with the amount collected through the sale of napkins.
Safe disposal
For safe disposal of the napkins at the community level, deep-pit burial or burning are the
options being considered. Due environmental clearance has to be obtained from the States for
this. Installing incinerators in schools that can be manually operated is another option.
Consultations are on with the Ministry of Environment and Forests for use of environment-
friendly raw material and disposal mechanism.
States have been given the option of leveraging funds for incinerators through the Total
Sanitation Campaign of Sarva Shiksha Abhiyan.
The scheme will be expanded to other districts after the outcome of the first phase is evaluated.
In that case, the States will be asked to contribute 15 per cent of the cost. The scheme can also be
transferred to the Ministries of Women and Child Development and Rural Development at a later
stage for self-financing and self-sustaining that will reduce the budgetary support.


Ivrs
The plan starts with spreading awareness and knowledge dissemination regarding menstrual
hygiene to the rural women with the help of SHGs. The training regarding the same would be
provided to the SHGs with the help of NGOs by stressing on the use of sanitary napkins & its
advantages. Once the basic awareness is created, the SHGs would be given the low cost sanitary
pad manufacturing machines and training to use them. Once the production process starts, the
marketing and sales channel would be built with the help of SHG members, ASHA workers,
ANMs etc using the IVRS (Interactive Voice Response System) model.Thus its a PPP model
where the Sakhi Mandals (SHGs) would be organized in tasks of production, spreading
awareness, promoting and selling these in their respective areas using the IVRS.

Saathi :banana waste fibre
Business Model
Saathi is a for-profit social enterprise that will launch in the state of Tamil Nadu located in
southern India. Saathi has two revenue sources: selling Saathi machines and selling packages of
raw materials to produce pads. Local entrepreneurial women will manufacture and sell Saathi
pads for Rs.2/pad. Working with groups of local women will enable Saathi to build on the trust
that these women have already cultivated with their local communities to produce and distribute
sanitary pads. The pads can be sold either through door-to-door distribution or sales at local
markets, depending on which is the most effective channel for each village.
Competitive Advantage
Innovation to address an unmet need: Saathi targets the rural poor, a group that has yet to be
reached by any large pad manufacturing or distribution company. Additionally, the Saathi small-
scale manufacturing machine is a low cost, modular, and locally made system that requires just
two female workers to produce pads quickly, providing them with full time employment.
Sensitivity to cultural barriers: Saathis distribution model through local entrepreneurial
women's groups will cater to rural women by using the power of social networks to educate and
encourage the adoption of inexpensive sanitary napkins.
Efficient cost structure: Saathi pads are inexpensive because the filling material is harvested
from waste banana fiber at a low cost and transformed into an absorbent pad filling material
using a proprietary process.
Social impact: Saathi is the Hindi word for friend. At the heart of the company is the desire to
collaborate with women in rural communities and be the friend who will help them achieve
their full potential. Saathi has the goal of providing employment over 500 women, while
creating access to sanitary pads to 320,000 women in rural India in the first 5 years of operation.
Awards & Recognitions
MIT IDEAS Winner Spring 2010 One of top 20 technology projects in the country chosen to
present at the USAID science expo, September 2010
MIT Executive Summary Competition Emerging Track Runner Up Winter 2011
Tufts 100K Entrepreneurship Competition Runner-Up Spring 2011
MIT 100K Semifinalist Spring 2011
MassChallenge Semifinalist Spring 2011
Accepted into Deshpande Foundation for Social Enterprise Entrepreneur-in-Residence Program
Fall 2011
Comments Off
May 12 11
MassChallenge, MIT100K Finale, and more
by Zach
Greetings all, it's been awhile since our last post, but we had lots going on so we saved it all for a
juicy update which you are about to read! Here it is in bullet form (to limit my rambling!):
MassChallenge: Saathi was selected into the second round of MassChallenge Entrepreneurship
Competition judging! Friday morning we will pitch to a panel of judges. The next step in the
competition if we advance would be a summer-long program called the MassChallenge
accelerator, where we could further develop our business model thanks to access to more
mentoring and other resources. The MassChallenge competition is a $1M startup competiton
open to anyone in the world. Check our http://masschallenge.org/accelerator/2011 for more
info.
MIT$100K Results: Last night was the Finale show of the 2011 MIT$100K
competition. Unfortunately Saathi did not win any prizes this time, but we still are extremely
thankful for all we gained in the Semi-Final round, especially getting connected with our two
amazing mentors, Luba Greenwood and Matt Shakhovskoy. Without their support, we would
not be nearly as ready for our upcoming pilots as we are today!
YouPitch Results: Thank you for all who voted for us!!! We didn't quite make the cut here
either, but we consider it a victory solely on the fact that it lit a fire under our social media
campaign, helping spread the word about Saathi's mission!
Deshpande Center for Social Entrepreneurship (DCSE): Back on a happier path, Saathi was
selected to participate in DCSE's Entrepreneurs in Residence program! The center will fund us in
support of our pilots upcoming in the next few months.