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Good Health, Fitness & Hygiene
{{contributorFullName}} | 16-05-2016
Mr. Muruganantham, the founder of the Jayaashree Industries, re-engineered a sanitary machine which has given women from low-income groups in India dignity, by making it possible for them to afford to buy sanitary towels and provide them with an income at the same time.
According to a report by market research group AC Nielsen, “Sanitary Protection: Every Woman’s Health Right”, 88% of women in India are driven to use ashes, newspapers, sand husks and dried leaves during their periods. As a result of these unhygienic practices, more than 70% of women suffer from reproductive tract infections, increasing the risk of contracting associated cancers.
The low cost mini sanitary napkin manufacturing machine, a revolutionary concept among the high cost complicated machines now in use, will be of immense benefit to ladies SHGs and aspiring women entrepreneurs.
In this machine, wood fiber (raw material) is defibrated, core formed and sealed with soft touch sensitive heat control, giving the final shape of the napkins. The machine requires single phase electricity for 1HP drive, can be accommodated in a space of 3.5 meters X 3.5 meters and produces 2 napkins per minute.
The sanitary napkins made out of this machine were distributed on trial basis among women who are used to other expensive napkins available in the market. The feedback from them has been extremely satisfactory, many of them expressing the opinion that they did not find any difference.
The machine costs only Rs. 75,000 (Taxes and Installation Expenses extra), making it easy for banks and financial lending institutions to finance this cottage industry. Overall, the sanitary napkin-making machine is Muruganantham’s first attempt at harnessing technology for the benefit of the underprivileged. Once the organization achieves its current goals to expand and propagate its invention, it would refocus to its core competency – inventing the Next Big Thing.
Muruganantham’s model builds a viable and sustainable enterprise that can be run efficiently by the stakeholders at the grassroots. It delivers an essential commodity – the sanitary napkin – to poor women at affordable rates without compromising on the raw material used (which is not the unviable cotton) or quality of the product as compared to the multinationals, and also reduces the players involved in the supply chain – the third person to handle the product (from its inception) is the consumer.
The technology used is simple and non-chemical. In fact, the machine uses purely mechanical processes such as grinding and de-fibration, pressing and sealing to convert the raw material – high-quality pine wood pulp – into a napkin.
Millions of women around the world cannot afford sanitary napkins, eventually resorting to an older and cheaper alternative – a piece of cloth or rag. This is an unhygienic alternative and can cause vaginal infections, skin irritations and embarrassing stains in public. But by reducing the unit price of a napkin, Muruganantham’s model enables women to switch over to napkins and maintain their hygiene.
A light-weight and voluminous product like the sanitary napkin introduces high transportation cost. This model allows local production and thus solves the problem. This model also addresses the issue of rampant unemployment amongst the poor in rural, urban and semi-urban areas of all developing nations. Overall, Muruganantham’s model offers livelihood, hygiene, dignity and empowerment to women all over the world. And it does so using a sustainable business framework.
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