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An Indian Inventor Disrupts The Period Industry

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Re: An Indian Inventor Disrupts The Period Industry

#141

Post by Dove »

sbov wrote: post #113
7rurl wrote: post #109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Where I live in the US it is no more taboo then urinating or defecating.

My female friends (and girlfriend) are all okay with saying they need to pee. However, they will never say something like "I need to change my tampon". If they do, it will be directed at 1 person in hushed tones and because they're out or something. Maybe yours are different though.

Isn't that just courtesy? I've found the topic tends to really gross guys out (much as uniquely . . . male things gross out girls), so it's best avoided in mixed company.

Re: An Indian Inventor Disrupts The Period Industry

#142

Post by BrandonM »

jacoblyles wrote: post #98
yalogin wrote: post #13

I am really glad to see that he did not jump to "profit" at the end. Hope he gets enough support.

What's so bad about profit? Most of the improvement in world living standards has been driven by profit-making enterprises.

The aspect of profit that is potentially bad is the maximization part. Based on the cost of the machine and some kind of statistical model, let's say that we determine that the inventor can make the most money (per time worked) if he sells his machines for $6000. Moreover, those who buy the machines can run the same kind of rational statistical analysis and sell the produced pads for $0.20 each (instead of $0.03).

Now only 25-50% of rural women are using these sanitary napkins, but the makers are maximizing their profits. How long before another person comes along and designs a similar machine that can narrow the profit margin?

Theoretical capitalism is quite efficient in theory, but in practice there are a lot of difficulties realizing it. In this case, it is admirable that people are willing to forgo maximal profit in an effort to instead look after the health of as many women as possible.

Re: An Indian Inventor Disrupts The Period Industry

#143

Post by yalogin »

solutionyogi wrote: post #22
yalogin wrote: post #13

I am really glad to see that he did not jump to "profit" at the end. Hope he gets enough support.

I am not so sure. I don't know why it could not have been a for-profit operation. Profit is not a dirty word. I would like to think that a for-profit company would have achieved his goal (of making cheap napkins available to women) faster than NGO approach. Let me give you an example. In India, many low income people can't afford shampoo bottles. So retail companies came up with a concept of 'shampoo sachet' [ http:/…

I am not so sure a corporation would keep the price low as a non-profit (or subsidized by the government). A lot of people replying to me said manufacturing in bulk would reduce the price there by achieving what a government subsidy cannot. I don't believe that to be true at all. Simply put if there is more money to be made a corporation will do so. A business would never ever reduce the price to bare minimum possible. There is no need for a business to go super cheap and cater to all the available market. That is not how businesses operate. In other words he could sell the same thing for 3 times the price and still sell enough. That is not his objective. I do agree that it probably would have been a sustainable model but cheaper definitely not.

Then to your other points. The shampoo sachets did bring shampoo to the common man not the poor. Businesses had to innovate because back then even the middle class could not afford shampoo. Also I hear many people used (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sapindus) before the shampoo with perfectly good results and so compelling them to move away from it required a really good motivation and a really low price was it.

Re: An Indian Inventor Disrupts The Period Industry

#144

Post by yason »

algoshift wrote: post #86

Wait a minute... According to the article and his website the machine costs $2,500 each, can produce 2 napkins per minute and requires 746W of power. Each machine employs a crew of four people. A full scale industrial machine is claimed to cost $500K and, from a quick bit of google-ing can produce 350 napkins per minute and requires about 80KW of power. Each machine seems to be operable by a small team of five or so,…

These are like the opposite ends of the approach continuum.

One end is a big centralized machinery designed to scale, and the appropriate logistics to ramp up availability across the country. But failures in production or transportation of goods will result in reduced availability. Also, centralized production drains the money to one place, namely the industrial area, and the local people might not have the money to continuously support buying these rags.

The other end is a distributed set of decentralized small-scale production fragments that produces local goods locally. The scheme will yield a higher local efficiency even if the total country-wide production of all units combine is more inefficient. It will recirculate local money more efficiently and boost local economy, again a local maxima, and this will allow more local people to buy the goods which was the whole point of this grassroots manufacturing. Also, production outages in one unit will not cause reduced availability since only a fraction of total production will be offline.

It gets fun to find analogies that fit this pattern. It's like Perforce vs Git, or West vs East.

Re: An Indian Inventor Disrupts The Period Industry

#145

Post by avallark »

algoshift wrote: post #86

Wait a minute... According to the article and his website the machine costs $2,500 each, can produce 2 napkins per minute and requires 746W of power. Each machine employs a crew of four people. A full scale industrial machine is claimed to cost $500K and, from a quick bit of google-ing can produce 350 napkins per minute and requires about 80KW of power. Each machine seems to be operable by a small team of five or so,…

If you weren't right, then the whole point of industrialization, division of labour etc, would be all wrong isnt it?

The advantage here is they will be able to sell napkins to a community at a MUCH lower price and still make a profit using these small machines than the industrial ones.

Re: An Indian Inventor Disrupts The Period Industry

#146

Post by smiler »

Someone wrote: post #97
algoshift wrote: post #86

Wait a minute... According to the article and his website the machine costs $2,500 each, can produce 2 napkins per minute and requires 746W of power. Each machine employs a crew of four people. A full scale industrial machine is claimed to cost $500K and, from a quick bit of google-ing can produce 350 napkins per minute and requires about 80KW of power. Each machine seems to be operable by a small team of five or so,…

A small counterargument: that industrial machine produces 21,000 napkins per hour = 500,000 per day = 15,000,000 per month. So, it would serve say 500,000 women. In highly rural areas of India, the distribution of the product would require quite a complex distribution mechanism.

Indeed, it is not clear if that is just for the machine which produces the napkins or for the entire production line.

Also to take in consideration is

- warehouse area to store raw materials - some kind of financial system to manage purchase orders / sales orders

21,000 napkins / hour. Let's assume there's 10 in a box, 8 boxes to a case and 30 cases in a pallet.

So that's 2400 napkins / pallet = ~ 9 pallets per hour. You're also going to need labelling, conveyors, people to pack the boxes, people to pack the cases, people to stack the pallets and then a few fork lifts to move the pallets plus of course engineering staff to maintain all this.

So it's not really small machine v big machine, it's small machine v production line which adds a lot of complexity.

Re: An Indian Inventor Disrupts The Period Industry

#147

Post by DanBC »

algoshift wrote: post #86

Wait a minute... According to the article and his website the machine costs $2,500 each, can produce 2 napkins per minute and requires 746W of power. Each machine employs a crew of four people. A full scale industrial machine is claimed to cost $500K and, from a quick bit of google-ing can produce 350 napkins per minute and requires about 80KW of power. Each machine seems to be operable by a small team of five or so,…

You've left out energy costs to transport raw material to central huge factory, and product from that central huge factory.

Re: An Indian Inventor Disrupts The Period Industry

#148

Post by marquis »

Dove wrote: post #140
marquis wrote: post #124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wherever the ads for sanitary items use blue ink.

Would you mind explaining what you're referring to? I've never encountered such a taboo, nor can I recall ads prominently featuring blue.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FRf35wCmzWw&t=34s

Watch the full ad for a spoof of every tampon commercial ever. They are absurd (basically the ad industry is in denial).

Re: An Indian Inventor Disrupts The Period Industry

#149

Post by ghaste »

Dove wrote: post #141
sbov wrote: post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My female friends (and girlfriend) are all okay with saying they need to pee. However, they will never say something like "I need to change my tampon". If they do, it will be directed at 1 person in hushed tones and because they're out or something. Maybe yours are different though.

Isn't that just courtesy? I've found the topic tends to really gross guys out (much as uniquely . . . male things gross out girls), so it's best avoided in mixed company.

And we define taboo as...
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