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The Indian sanitary pad revolutionary
21–30 of 273 posts
Re: The Indian sanitary pad revolutionary
#22Contrast this grass roots effort with OLPC, a grandiose plan to distribute One Laptop per Child to the third world. The best quip I ever read about that was: "OLPC is a rich man's idea of what poor men need. It's like donating an expresso machine to a homeless shelter."
Instead, as the article makes clear, many poor villages don't even have ready access to clean water. This one humble guy has done more good for more people in India than 1000 grandiose schemes such as OLPC. And he wants to expand to 106 countries. I wish him well.
Re: The Indian sanitary pad revolutionary
#23So after all that he managed to lower the price from £0.04 to £0.025 ... is that a meaningful reduction?
I wonder if that was 4 rupees in 1998, vs 2.5 rupees now? According to an online inflation calculator, 1 rupee in 1998 is worth 4 rupees now, so the difference would be more like 16:2.5. Perhaps someone could check an online Indian Amazon equivalent, not that such a place would be available to rural women anyway, but it would give a lower baseline.
Plus reduction in medical problems and mortality and an increase in productivity.
I'm also not clear to what extent the mass-produced pads were actually available. He seems to have started out in a populated area with several villages and a significant town nearby. In more rural areas, was there even someplace you realistically could buy them?
Re: The Indian sanitary pad revolutionary
#24This is an amazingly inspiring story, I love the entrepreneurial spirit and dedication of Mr Muruganantham. However, there is a bigger story hiding behind this personal triumph. It's clear that people living in impoverished areas are not in a position to buy sanitary products at market rates (being sold at a margin of 4000% or more). But for example many do have access to cheap raw materials. It makes a ton of sense…
The article mentions that commercial napkins sold for 4 rupees despite cotton being 1/4000th the cost, but also says farther down that the locally produced ones sell for an average of 2.5 rupees each. That's a 38% discount: significant, but it doesn't seem like a game-changing difference to me. I imagine that if this catches on, the larger manufacturers will likely just cut their margins to compete.
On a more general note, one of the big reasons for the Industrial Revolution's switch to mass-production was that making goods in huge factories is more efficient, and ultimately cheaper, than producing them locally in small quantities. Economies of scale are powerful.
Re: The Indian sanitary pad revolutionary
#25This is an amazingly inspiring story, I love the entrepreneurial spirit and dedication of Mr Muruganantham. However, there is a bigger story hiding behind this personal triumph. It's clear that people living in impoverished areas are not in a position to buy sanitary products at market rates (being sold at a margin of 4000% or more). But for example many do have access to cheap raw materials. It makes a ton of sense…
The article mentions that commercial napkins sold for 4 rupees despite cotton being 1/4000th the cost, but also says farther down that the locally produced ones sell for an average of 2.5 rupees each. That's a 38% discount: significant, but it doesn't seem like a game-changing difference to me. I imagine that if this catches on, the larger manufacturers will likely just cut their margins to compete. On a more general…
>>Economies of scale are powerful.
A lot of companies dealing with products like these spend insane money on advertising, marketing and other mechanisms to sell their product. I think Pepsi can sell their drink at 1/10th price if they dropped the ads, sponsorships, marketing etc.
And not to mention. People themselves perceive cheaper products as that of low quality.
Re: The Indian sanitary pad revolutionary
#26So after all that he managed to lower the price from £0.04 to £0.025 ... is that a meaningful reduction?
I wonder if that was 4 rupees in 1998, vs 2.5 rupees now? According to an online inflation calculator, 1 rupee in 1998 is worth 4 rupees now, so the difference would be more like 16:2.5. Perhaps someone could check an online Indian Amazon equivalent, not that such a place would be available to rural women anyway, but it would give a lower baseline.
Branded pads retail range Rupees 10-25 per pad - some variation in capacity. So the contemporary ratio ranges from 4:1 to 10:1. So 16:2.5 is good estimate even for contemporary comparison!
@pja you are hereby awarded 1 Fermi (see recent link on the topic of Fermi estimates).
The saving is significant because one can also buy shampoo in sachets that cost Rs.5, so the savings expand access to a range of basic hygiene products.
Re: The Indian sanitary pad revolutionary
#27This is an amazingly inspiring story, I love the entrepreneurial spirit and dedication of Mr Muruganantham. However, there is a bigger story hiding behind this personal triumph. It's clear that people living in impoverished areas are not in a position to buy sanitary products at market rates (being sold at a margin of 4000% or more). But for example many do have access to cheap raw materials. It makes a ton of sense…
The imoverished areas also have a large supply of cheap labour (themselves). If you bring the manufacuring local, then it could be cheaper.
Re: The Indian sanitary pad revolutionary
#28As an Indian, I can see what pain this guy went through. Fighting the society to build a start up like this, with this kind of taboo attached to the product? All the best trying to build a start up at the first place. You are almost treated like you are doing it because you absolutely are incapable of doing anything else.
And having the gumption to fight years of laughter, isolation, mockery and ridicule to only chase what you believe in is a very different thing than just building a company. You are fighting forces that you would do anything to see you fail. And this is beyond the merit of your product.
I salute this guy for not just what he has achieved. Though the margins he achieved will be eventually matched by bigger companies.
In many ways this is like the first man climbing the Everest or first space agency going to the moon. Others have been there after the first attempt. But the people who do it first, face significant obstacles. And they inspire all of us.
Re: The Indian sanitary pad revolutionary
#29There's a lot to this article. See how the distributed form of production really works, and these sanitary pad machines really aren't that different from open source software. See how they change the world and again, the distributed ownership and small business approach does it.
And additionally, why it is never a good idea to underestimate someone because of a lack of formal education.
Re: The Indian sanitary pad revolutionary
#30As an Indian, I can see what pain this guy went through. Fighting the society to build a start up like this, with this kind of taboo attached to the product? All the best trying to build a start up at the first place. You are almost treated like you are doing it because you absolutely are incapable of doing anything else. And having the gumption to fight years of laughter, isolation, mockery and ridicule to only chas…
I don't know that the bigger companies will achieve the success. This guy's brilliance is in grasping the same economic reality that exists behind open source software, namely that the wider dispersed ownership of the tools one uses to produce things are, the easier it is to achieve long-term success.