Friday, August 17, 2018

WOMEN SPECIAL.... Period Positive


 Period Positive

Several companies are lining up sustainable products for menstruation. It is largely a movement by women for women

It matters. Period.” When 26-year-old firstgen entrepreneur Tanvi Johri came up with this tagline for her premium, 100% natural and biodegradable sanitary napkins, Carmesi, the inspiration came from within. For years, Johri had struggled with painful periods. Skin rashes were a recurring problem, caused by the plastic sanitary napkins that she used and what were commonly available.
By the time she was 22, and nearly a decade or so into her menstruating life, she decided to take stock. “I had tried various products, soft and plastic, to manage my periods. But the discomfort was universal. Then, four years ago, while interning at a startup, I decided to research on organic pads.” In May 2017, Johri designed a sanitary pad made up of cornstarch and bamboo. In November 2017, she and friend Rikshav Bohra launched the product. “We first used our savings. Then we got seed funding from a group of angel investors, including Sunil Kalra and Arun Venkatachalam from the Murugappa Group.”
It has been a thrill ride for Johri. “Women write to us with their user experiences. So many of them have shared stories of discomfort, rashes and allergies they have suffered due to conventional pads.”
Carmesi made a revenue of 1 crore last year and is targeting 7-8 crore this year. This cannot be compared with the Indian sanitary napkin market’s 2017 valuation of $441 million, according to market researcher IMARC. But the fact remains that period product options for Indian women — which have largely been either pads or tampons — is increasing.
The growing conversation around menstruation, the fight for an exemption from the goods and services tax (which just came through), and period-positive movements — a lot after the movie Pad Man — have made sure companies don’t ignore the need for innovative, functional and accessible sanitary products. In short, a new-wave femcare is coming up with products largely designed and made by women for women. The focus here is on bodysafe, eco-friendly menstrual hygiene solutions.
Sample this: Companies like EcoFemme makes reusable cloth pads, while Saathi and Purganics make 100% biodegradable pads. Adira and Clovia offer period panties. Shecup, Boondh Cup, Silky Cup are trying to get women to use menstrual cups.
Bengaluru-based Bharti Kannan of social enterprise Boondh found out about menstrual cups in 2011; she was, as a student of Tata Institute of Social Sciences specialising in gender studies and public health, researching on ways to manage periods. She and Sonal Jain, who operates out of Chennai, have been promoting Boondh cups through social media initiatives and their menstrual hygiene workshops. The cups, produced in China, retail at 590. From selling 70-80 cups a month in 2016, it now manages to sell 700.
Unlike pads, menstrual cups are made of medical-grade silicone and fit right inside the vaginal canal, and collect the blood. The cups can be cleaned easily and reused. The product lasts for 4-5 years and is environment friendly. “Yet, in a country of 300 million menstruating women, only 30,000-40,000 use cups. We have not even scratched the surface yet,” Kannan says.
The lack of awareness might have a lot to do with social and cultural issues, too. “Could be due to one of all of the following,” says Ashish Malani of Mumbai-based Shecup, “lack of information or access, a pad-heavy mindset, or the fact that physical insertion is considered a no-no for unmarried women.”
Malani, along with his brother Bharat, entered the market commercially in 2010 with menstrual cup maker Shecup, after they lost a close relative to cervical cancer because of unhygienic practices. Bharat, a medical equipment professional, decided to import cost-effective cervical diagnostics kits. When that didn’t take off, the brothers researched hygienic menstrual products and decided on the cup for their self-funded venture.
To avoid “medico-legal issues”, Malani had to create a gynaecological prototype and approach doctors for certification. Words like insertion or implant couldn’t be used, as they knew it would face immediate rejection. “We built a base slowly, through workshops with corporates and with NGOs.
Even so, the big companies used to ask if we had ‘ladies’ to hold the workshops,” he adds.
But that situation has changed in 10 years. Malani, who works as an accountant apart from running the social enterprise, says, “We have seen a jump in our sales in the last two years. About 500-600 units sell every month as opposed to 50-60 earlier.” What needs to improve is the level of education. The educated urban woman is as clueless and period-shy as her rural counterpart, Malani says. “Ignorance and shame are across the board — at all settings. Our 30-minute corporate sessions have often run into well over two hours as women have so many questions about their own bodies.”
This does not surprise social entrepreneur and cofounder of Ahmedabad-based Menstrupedia, Aditi Gupta, who has been fighting for creating a period-positive narrative for six years. She and her partner Tuhin Paul has created a multi-channel educational resource on menstruation which includes web, comic book and audio visual aid. “Even in schools, the reproductive chapter is often skipped or covered in a hurry. A study has found that 3 out of 10 girls don’t even know what menstruation is at the time of their first period,” she says.
The idea behind Gupta’s venture — the Menstrupedia Comic — was to be able to discuss menstruation in a non-threatening way and without the shame. The comic has reached more than 50 million users through online and offline efforts. Four state governments have adopted the comic and 250-plus schools in India use these books. It has been translated to 11 regional languages and 4 foreign languages (Spanish, Nepali, Bulgarian, Russian and Portuguese).
But all these are only a mere drop in the ocean, says Gupta. “The myths and myth creation around menstruation and a woman’s growing body is enormous and has to be chipped away slowly. Thankfully, conversations around period-positivity are catching up and there’s a zeal to explore alternative period management.” A cup user herself, Gupta says period management can’t be a fight of products. “Sustainable is the way of the future. But the burden of the environment can’t be placed on the shoulders of a 13-year-old menstruating girl,” she says. Gupta wants to create an informative guide for boys on their puberty, and also to encourage healthy conversations about sex.
Conversations are required to change the mindset, says Bengaluru-based entrepreneur Deepa Kumar. “Not cocktail conversations or ‘trying to trend’ talks, but healthy discussions.” In 2008, Kumar invented the period panty and started online sales through My-Adira.com . She holds a patent in the US for the product. The self-funded venture sells 5,000 units a month.
A period panty is a fortified underwear with leak-stops for better stain protection. It is not a substitute for a pad. “Haven’t we all have asked friends to check for stains when we get up or avoided wearing white during our cycle,” Kumar asks. This shame is what she wants to erase. The mother of two daughters says early puberty experiences can set the course of a girl’s personality. “Her self-esteem and self-worth can all be affected by the experiences in these formative years.”
The cofounder of lingerie brand Clovia, Neha Kant, wants to go a step further. After all, she says, innerwear has to match the advancements in outerwear. Kant and Suman Chowdhury, who heads product design, founded Clovia in 2015. They decided to launch their first range of period panties in February of that year. “The insight was from a young gaggle of design interns who talked of a product to help them manage the fear of getting stains,” she says. Through an online exercise, they decided to not make the products in boring old colours. So came panties with a character, and sporting slogans such as “Not today. Period”, “Dear uterus, f@3k off” or “I scream, Ice cream”.
Kant says women wrote in thanking them “for making periods fun”. The products, retailing at 3 for 599, were sold out in under three months. “More people are talking about menstruation as more women and girls are now as active during their periods as every other day. There was always an inherent need that was not addressed. Now these needs are getting addressed, and mostly by women, as the problem is intrinsic to us and we understand it better,” adds Kumar of MyAdira.com.
Nupur Amarnath
ETM5AUG18

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