The two entrepreneurs championing menstrual hygiene
“They called Arunachalam Muruganantham the sanitary napkin maker and I, the napkin destroyer,” says Nitheesh N R with a chuckle in an interview with The Hindu. The 29-year-old was called so by a group of women in Mumbai when he introduced the sanitary napkin incinerator to them. Elsewhere, at a women’s college in Coimbatore, it was amidst catcalls that he started his session on menstrual hygiene and proper disposal of napkins. “I wasn’t perturbed though. At the end of the presentation the same girls came up to me to clear doubts. Perhaps they had a change of heart seeing a man talking about something that many women are ashamed to discuss in the open,” he adds.
Nitheesh is one of the directors of city-based InnovoSoft Technologies, which manufactures sanitary napkin vending machines and incinerators. Nitheesh has been holding awareness sessions on menstrual hygiene and disposal of napkins along with his cousin, Mydhili G, who runs Mydhili’s Group of Institutions. The sessions are being held in educational institutions, government offices and several establishments for the last two years now.
The venture was launched under InnovoSoft’s Arogya Vidya Bharat (AVB) programme, an initiative to ‘enable girls to stay hygiene by ensuring access to hygienic products and disposal options.’ “InnovoSoft’s focus has been education and we worked closely with Bengaluru-based Menda Foundation to launch smart classes in Tamil Nadu and Karnataka.
That was when we came in touch with many NGOs who pointed out the need to provide sanitary napkins. As we scouted for prospective suppliers we realised that disposal of napkins is a huge problem with most of them being thrown in the open or flushed down drains. We studied about incinerators in hospitals and then designed our own. Now, besides incinerators for commercial use, we market napkin incinerators for households,” Nitheesh says.
How does it work?
The Incinerator burns the sanitary napkins and reduces them into micro ash, which is collected in the inbuilt ash-tray. There is also a 2-inch emission outlet at the top of the incinerator for pushing out the fumes developed during the incineration.
Nitheesh says, “Our machines are easy to operate and maintain; they work automatically and destroy sanitary napkins, both scientifically and hygienically. The machine is provided with an auto cut-off function, which will turn it off automatically after incineration of the napkins.”
Alternately, the incinerator scientifically disposes your napkins and reduces their burden on the environment. Nitheesh shares, “While designing the machine for the household purpose, we have taken utmost care for Low Power Consumption and quick burning process. Our machine consumes 1.2 to 1.5 Ampere and takes 3–5 minutes for converting the napkin into ashes and fumes.”
They also organise awareness programmes in schools and colleges, so that young girls understand why it is important to look after the proper disposal of their menstrual hygiene products.
InnovoSoft is currently active in various parts of Kerala as well as Kolhapur and Mumbai in Maharashtra, with a team that is enthusiastically covering more schools every day, installing the napkin destroyer that will reduce the woes of the user, the manual labourer and the planet.
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