How Self-Helping Group (SHG) women are winning hearts with their sanitary napkin manufacturing business!
The last decade has been great for menstrual hygiene as a cause, because the government and a lot of corporate houses with their CSRs have identified that there is a need to increase access to sanitary napkins across India. Overall, there has been a lot of groundbreaking work done over the past few years.
There have been multiple challenges in Centralised business models which have resulted in many Self-help groups start their own Sanitary napkin manufacturing businesses but not all of them were successful.
Identifying a lot of these gaps, Saral design came up with a business-in-a-box model, which addresses key problems that were identified in this decade.
Problem 1 : Quality of sanitary napkins.
Solution by Saral: We researched and modified the raw materials and how they are made into a combination of best so that the increase the quality of the product, whether it was made in manual or automatic machines
Problem 2 : Unit Economics.
Solution by Saral : We made sure that the capital cost of the Sanitary napkin-making machine is also very low but at the same time there is enough automation and process innovation with which we saved costs. Let’s take an example to understand this better.
- We have given 4-Combo raw materials in manual machines so that the whole hand application of glue is saved. By doing this we saved time and human effort, which makes the process more inefficient.
This makes it low cost as well as high quality giving us the winningadvantage for self-help groups to start their businesses in their space.
You can watch the video of our Swachh Micro-Machine in the link below :
Introducing Swachh Micro Machine
Identifying and Understanding this need and our efforts, NABARD a subsidiary of Nab Foundation came up with this project under MY PAD|MY RIGHT, which was inaugurated by Smriti Irani, a member of the Lok Sabha, in 2020. They came up with the idea to take this innovation to all districts of the country, starting with 70 districts across the country.
Preliminary studies conducted by them regarding Menstrual Hygiene revealed alarming facts like unavailability of Pads among 60% rural women .The project ‘MY PAD|MY RIGHT’ was designed to address various issues of Awareness, Accessibility, Affordability and Acceptance.
Saral Design , due to their innovative products and ideas has been chosen as a selected partner to supply Sanitary Napkin making machines with Nab Foundation , across the country.
This project is particularly exciting as we are working across India, from Kashmir to kanya kumari, from Gujrat to Assam, and every District in India to implement such a great Initiative by NABARD.
Looking at the extremely deep interiors of India, where access to sanitary napkins is a huge problem.
These self-help group women are not just showing a lot of courage to start the business but also winning hearts.
We are glad to share one particular story of an entrepreneur from Kashmir who is part of this program. Her Name is Rizwana Shaikh. She decided to start her own sanitary napkin business. So she could supply sanitary napkins to women in need in rural and remote areas and create employment for the SHG women.
As she was exploring to start the sanitary napkin business for over a year she came across NABARD’s MY PAD|MY RIGHT Program from one of their relatives in Mumbai.So they enrolled for the project to get the supply of a Sanitary napkin-making machine.
Team Saral supported her through the entire process.
We understood her requirements. As it was in kashmir the temperature was around -10 degrees, our team members managed to go there and did the installation and training. Despite multiple ups and downs women were encouraged for the successful installation & training. These women are winning hearts of the community and providing very high quality sanitary napkins.
From Machine installation, Raw Material supply, Machine Service, Quality End Products, and Training for both Machine and Menstrual hygiene Awareness all were provided by team SARAL!
For our successful Installation and training, the client has given very positive feedback.
Let’s empower all of these women and make MY PAD|MY RIGHT NationWide Campaign.
Do contact us for more information about the project:
+91 82865 80043 | +91 81081 39176
Email ID : [email protected] | [email protected] | [email protected]
EL-11, DNA Road, Electronic Zone, Near Nelco Bus Stop MIDC, Mahape, Navi Mumbai-400710
