Love, warmth, care. Its endless if you go down listing the traits of a conventional Indian woman, but there is a sad part of it that she forgets her own needs in the vast concerns for her family. Her health has taken a toll. Of the 355 million reproductive-age women in India, only 12 percent use absorbent pads or another sanitary method to stem the blood flow during their periods, a report by AC Nielsen and Plan India found in 2010. The rest tend to rely on old fabric, husks, dried leaves and grass, ash, sand or newspapers. We at Titli decided to not just talk, but take a step towards this taboo shadowed social problem.
Our survey of 1500 women in the urban slums of Delhi in December 2016, revealed lack of affordability of sanitary napkins and lack of awareness about the problem among women as major obstacles towards the success of any social enterprise. Our team focusses on solving both these problems by designing products, that drive behavioural change and enable the community to take tangible actions.
We have developed low cost biodegradable sanitary pads, that can be manufactured within the target community of slum women. These pads are sold, via innovative marketing strategies to the women of the community at extremely low costs. Our partnership with NGOs working in the field, provides us with a platform of deploying our awareness games for generating awareness among women about the issue of hygiene and at the same time, making the process enjoyable.
1. Leveraged the human centric approach for development and iteration of certified products that are easy to manufacture. 2. In house manufacturing drives self sustainability and generates trust within the community 3. A team of individuals from varied backgrounds and strong existing partnerships with NGOs for product deployment.
Our sanitary pads are able to reach women living in the Bottom of the Pyramid sector of urban cities, thus reducing health risks for this underpreviliged community. The women manufacturers are instilled with a sense of social empowerment and an increase in entreprenurial confidence due to their contribution towards the cause. Our awareness games are a step towards change in perspective about menstrual hygiene, thus aiding in creation of a more aware and educated society.
Our pads are biodegradable and made out of non toxic raw materials, thus having a minimal ecological burden. We are working towards reduction in carbon footprint for Our awareness games via apdation of green manufacturing practices.
The sales of our pads result in a revenue that completely belongs to the women manufacturers, thus making the model financially self sustainable. The revenue from awareness games is shared with manufacturers and our margins are all pooled into development of new products, awareness campaigns and market outreach activities.
