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An Indian Inventor Disrupts The Period Industry

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Re: An Indian Inventor Disrupts The Period Industry

#81

Post by solutionyogi »

_pius wrote: post #80
solutionyogi wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think the OP meant to suggest that increase wealth of poor people and make them middle class. You can definitely not create wealth by selling 25 cents napkins.

You can definitely not create wealth by selling 25 cents napkins. Are you sure about that? If every (menstruating) woman in your village purchases their sanitary napkins from you every month because you've got the one machine within 25 miles, you may have a compelling small business, especially when adjusted for cost of living and ease of labor.

Now that I re-read that sentence, it's not well written. When replying to the parent comment, I wanted to clarify that these napkins will create wealth and help poor people move to middle class. I meant to say that you can not become filthy rich selling 25 cents napkins.

Re: An Indian Inventor Disrupts The Period Industry

#82

Post by meow »

evmar wrote: post #72

I am sad to say when I read this I worried whether the manufacturers' samples would come back to bite him in the form of some sort of patent lawsuit. I guess it could be considered a benefit that he isn't making money, as it makes him a smaller target.

That's much less of a worry in developing world. No manufacturer wants to link "selfish" word with its name in news head lines. And that is how its gonna look if they sue.

Re: An Indian Inventor Disrupts The Period Industry

#83

Post by absentbird »

bad_user wrote: post #69
jackityquack wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think wealthy Indians are better than empowered Indians.

There are many wealthy Indians in India already - what India needs is a middle-class - i.e. people that have a roof over their head, with their basic needs taken care of and that are empowered to create their own wealth.

To the poster below me: he is selling $2500 machines. The people he sells the machines to sell the $.25 napkins but the machine can make 1000 napkins a day. One machine properly worked could turn a gross profit of $91,250/year. He has sold 600 machines so far so that is $1.5 million that the inventor has grossed.

Maybe they aren't super rich but I am sure the napkin makers and the inventor are both doing better then they would otherwise and more importantly they are keeping the money in India.

Re: An Indian Inventor Disrupts The Period Industry

#84

Post by meow »

jackityquack wrote: post #47
masklinn wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Also, he could probably do more good for his country by selling his product. If you consider that his product is the napkin-making machine rather than the napkins themselves, he does. > If he creates a better industry, he can keep the profits in India. Profits are kept in india, instead of building his own giant he empowers others. All in all, your comment seems to make little sense and to have stopped at the secon…

I think wealthy Indians are better than empowered Indians.

It's a case of one wealthy indian vs many empowered indians. And from the financial model of this guy (selling his machines through rural women) he obviously prefers latter.

Re: An Indian Inventor Disrupts The Period Industry

#85

Post by [deleted] »

cowpewter wrote: post #32
tantalor wrote: post #18

I applaud the inventor's drive to lower the cost of production, but sanitary napkins aren't necessarily the best solution. For instance, a menstrual cup is generally more cost efficient and certainly more environmentally friendly. And it can be manufactured with simple equipment (rubber injection mold). http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Menstrual_cup

It probably is a better solution (I use one myself and my only gripe is that I wished I'd known it was an option as a teenager and not already been 30 when I discovered them), but if the menstrual taboo is as strong there as that article implies, then it may be an even harder sell than a man designing a napkin machine. There's a lot more potential hand-contact with menstrual blood when using a cup than pads, and whil…

[deleted]

Re: An Indian Inventor Disrupts The Period Industry

#86

Post by algoshift »

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, but let's double that to ten people.

In order to match the production rate of a single industrial machine you would need:

Machines: 175

Cost: $437,500

Power: 131KW

Workers: 700

According to this (http://mahadiscom.com/emagazine/jan06/india1%5B1%5D.pdf) electricity cost in India runs around 1.5 rupees per KWh for residential and 3.5 rupees per KWh for industrial applications. Assuming ten hours per day (for easy math) the power costs compare as follows (converted to USD):

175 low cost machines @131KWh in household settings: USD $37 per day.

Industrial machine @80KWh in industrial setting: USD $52.87 per day.

The industrial machine cost a little more to run (power) but it produces 175 times more product per machine. Put a different way, around USD $0.03 of power is required per napkin with the household machine. The industrial machine --even at more than double the electricity cost-- only requires USD $0.0003 per napkin in power.

In terms of labor costs --assuming $1 per hour-- the household machine would cost about $0.033 per napkin while the industrial machine runs $0.0005 per napkin.

According to the linked statistic the TAM (Total Addressable Market) is around 300 million women:

http://articles.timesofindia.indiatimes.com/2011-01-23/india...

If his dream to "make India a 100% napkin-using country" is fully realized you would need to produce a minimum of 1500 million napkins per month (assuming five pads used per period). The solutions compare as follows:

Assuming that the machines are run 24 hours per day for 30 days.

- Household solution

Machines: 17362

Cost: $43,405,000

Power: 12MW

Labor cost per 30 days: $25,001,280

- Industrial Solution:

Machines: 100

Cost: $50,000,000

Power: 8MW

Labor cost per 30 days: $90,000

Unless my numbers are grossly wrong (please check, I threw them together quickly) this is not as good a solution as it has been made out to be. In fact, it looks like a really bad solution to a large scale problem. The costs are staggering. Power consumption is at least 50% greater. I'll bet that product quality and consistency also suffers a great deal. And, of course, we haven't even covered maintenance costs and MTBF (Mean Time Between Failures) of 18,000 low-cost machines versus 100 industrial grade machines.

Good job. Lots of work. But I'd invest in a used industrial machine out of China over making thousands of these low cost household devices.

Re: An Indian Inventor Disrupts The Period Industry

#87

Post by ajju »

urbanjunkie wrote: post #55
microarchitect wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The fatalistic, egotistical and selfish attitude epitomised by women I wouldn't be so quick to judge. If you're a woman in India and a strange man asks you to try something weird that could potentially harm your body, I think you have every right to be suspicious of that person. this fatalistic selfishness isn't a gender based issue. It is, however, one of the corrosive elements of Indian culture that worries me I ag…

Paraphrased from final paragraph of the article. "According to Sumathi Dharmalingam, a housewife who runs a napkin-making business based around the machine, rural women [snipped] have a devil-may-care attitude about their health. "When I caution them that they might have to have their uterus removed because of reproductive infections, they just say, 'So what? How long are we going to live anyway?' She's basically ask…

It is ignorance not selfishness. You are looking at these women from the lens of someone who can probably not fathom the level of ignorance amongst the poor uneducated folks in India. If they really understood what it is to lose a uterus, and they believed this random stranger that this would happen, they would be much more open to the idea of using a napkin.

As things stand, these women and all generations before them have been using rags. They really can't imagine why they need this new fangled thing called a napkin. Worse, it is very likely a choice between this new fangled thing they don't think they need, and having a bit less food tonight. In that context, it's obvious why they choose to go with the rag.

Re: An Indian Inventor Disrupts The Period Industry

#88

Post by scott_s »

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,…

His solution may be better given the infrastructure. I don't know what the infrastructure is like, but using one big machine requires being able to distribute the napkins to a much wider area. In, say, the US, that's an easy win. We have good infrastructure, and it makes sense to use one big machine and buy them in stores. That may not be true in India - I invite anyone with knowledge on the subject to comment.

Re: An Indian Inventor Disrupts The Period Industry

#89

Post by Duff »

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're looking at one aspect of the problem, from the supply side. We've had industrial scale manufacturing of sanitary napkins for 100 years.

Procter and Gamble can already produce these things for a fraction of the cost. But building and maintaining a distribution network, marketing the product and making a healthy profit drives costs up.

This solution turns that problem on its head. Disperse the manufacturing locally, and let traditional/local social networks get the napkins distributed. In a country as large and complex as India, this is probably easier than finding 5,000 marketing campaigns to try to reach many small pockets of demand regarding a taboo subject.

Re: An Indian Inventor Disrupts The Period Industry

#90

Post by huhtenberg »

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,…

This ain't a Google interview :) so the follow-up question is to make a list of reasons why his solution is more practical than buying a used machine out of China.

The hint is the locality of production.

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