I was lucky to get the chance to be a part of the E-Cell Summit organised by IIT this weekend. However, I was even luckier to have met the Menstrual Man a.k.a Muruganantham. He is on a mission – to create a White Revolution.
The White Revolution is the revolution where women get affordable access to sanitary napkins.
Now I know that this is a topic you may start feeling uncomfortable about. In fact, Indians are trained to think about menstrual sanitation as a topic that is taboo.
But did you know that the taboo extends to a level where only 7% of women in India use sanitary napkins? Even more shocking, only 2% of these are from rural areas. This means that 98% of the women in rural India have no access to sanitary napkins.
“Women in villages sit on stacks of hay when menstruating. Or they use the same cloth rags they used the month before – dried in a shady part of the house as you wouldn’t want to be a woman that is caught drying those rags in public”, says Muruganantham.
Currently, the sanitary pad making business is a macro business which is monopolised across the globe by two major players – Johnson & Johnson and Proctor & Gamble. Muruganantham is on a mission to change that – he has developed a machine that empowers women to make their own sanitary napkins.
Here’s a few things I learnt from him:
Persistence is Key
The Menstrual Man taught me the importance of persistence. He initially wanted to learn how to create a sanitary pad at home. So he would wait every month for his wife’s periods and create various pads that she could use. However, he soon realised that the research wasn’t going fast enough so he tried to enlist medical college girls. “I would ask the girls for their sanitary napkins so I could check how they were made”, says Muruganantham. However, the college students wouldn’t give him true feedback so he took it upon himself to test his product. He used a pouch of animal blood that was tied to his waist and tried to accomplish the days tasks without the pouch breaking. People in his village shunned him and thought he was eating animals as he stenched of animal blood. But the Menstrual Man did not give up. “Because I am uneducated I kept going. If you are educated, what would happen?”, he asks.
Your business shouldn’t be about money
“It is shameful for me that it took an American to make life for my wife and daughters easier during menstruation”, says Muruganantham. Most women in rural India have no access to sanitary napkins and cannot afford it, this is assuming there was no taboo in talking about the subject. He went from wanting to create a sanitary napkin for his village to creating a machine that empowers women to create the pads themselves. So far, he has distributed 746 machines in 23 states and converted 3.5 million women into wearing sanitary napkins for their health and comfort. Your business is not about making money. Your business needs to be about addressing the adversity of society.
Don’t undertake CSR because you have to
The CSR fever is at an all time high with the government trying to make CSR compulsory for companies with profits over a certain level. However, the Menstrual Man says that CSR is like a mini makeup kit in a women’s hand – it is only used for touchup. And he is right. Don’t undertake CSR because you have to. Do it because you want to build a corporation that has a measurable social impact.
His story touched a nerve with me. While it is great to have entrepreneurs that build apps, provide great services and pioneer cool technology it is amazing to meet entrepreneurs like Muruganantham. They are addressing problems that shouldn’t be ‘problems’ in the 21st century.
He started a silent white revolution. By thinking like a woman. Muruganantham is Menstrual Man.
Check out his video and become a part of the silent white revolution:
