An Indian Inventor Disrupts The Period Industry • Hacker News Board

Re: An Indian Inventor Disrupts The Period Industry

#151

Post by eru » Wed, Dec 21, 2011, 7:01 AM UTC

dragons wrote: post #116

urbanjunkie wrote: post #8

This is both inspiring and depressing. Female medical students not wishing to talk to a man about menstruation. The fatalistic, egotistical and selfish attitude epitomised by women being unconcerned about losing their uterus. And of course, if you don't care about your own uterus, you're unlikely to care about litter, the environment, or pretty much anything. (ps, as someone who has spent a lot of time in India and w…

The fatalistic, egotistical and selfish attitude epitomised by women being unconcerned about losing their uterus I agree that it's fatalistic. But it's the opposite of egotistical and selfish. People with healthy egos generally care a lot about whether they will their lose organs, or their lives. The women in question apparently don't. From the article: 'So what? How long are we going to live anyway?' . And maybe the…

It's more about caring about myself now, versus caring about my later self.

It's probably better to analyse this in terms of discounting rates (i.e. interest rates).

Re: An Indian Inventor Disrupts The Period Industry

#152

Post by eru » Wed, Dec 21, 2011, 7:09 AM UTC

aidenn0 wrote: post #58

jackityquack wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So the only way for farmers to survive is to subsidize them? The only way is to spend government money to prop them up? If what you say is true, then other solutions need to be explored. Like I said, maybe partnerships or something so they can compete. It's not economically viable otherwise. It's a waste of capital. It's like funding the music industry because their business doesn't work. Music industry, agricultural…

Unsubsidized farmers competing with subsidized farmers are likely to lose. If you can't stop subsidizing foreign farmers, then the Nash equilibrium is to subsidize your farmers too.

Why? Just let your people go into other industries, give the countryside over to nature or golf courses, and enjoy the cheaper food thanks to those stupid governments that subsidize their farmers.

Re: An Indian Inventor Disrupts The Period Industry

#153

Post by medius » Wed, Dec 21, 2011, 6:25 PM UTC

ChuckMcM wrote: post #94

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,…

Great analysis, missed a huge point though. A fraction of an industrial machine makes zero napkins. Your analysis is spot on, the problem can be solved more efficiently with a large scale production. The capital expenditure cost however is similar (43M vs 50M). You point out they huge disparity in labor costs $25M vs .09M but labor is 'free' in India (which is to say there is so much of it available that the price is…

I agree. Of all the arguments, the one about transportation is probably the most important. Even though there has been good improvements in national highways over the last decade, majority of the roads in India are still in desperate need of repair. Price of gas is about $6/gal. As compared to US, it takes probably 4 times longer to cover the same distance due to traffic and road conditions.

This problem is not new and I am sure that companies like J&J have looked at the Indian market. Reaching remote villages while providing a low price is something that a big company concerned about profits will not consider at all. Not until the numbers make sense.