Sreelatha Menon: The business of love

The napkins are called Mitan in Chhattisgarh, Nirmal in Maharashtra, Sakhi in Jharkhand and Nari Suraksha in Uttarakhand. In each of these states, women inmates in jails are making pads, and stealing untapped markets from right under the nose of big brands, which so far had captured just seven per cent of the market.

A single machine costs Rs 2,50,000 and employs four women. But, it ensures that at least 3,000 women around the napkin-making unit now wear napkins that cost just a rupee! And, this means they don't have to go for desperate and often unhygienic options to protect themselves during their menstruation.

His business formula is simple: 'Don't chase money. Chase problems and provide solutions. Money will come as a by-product'.

"Even MBA students don't understand that success is not accumulation of wealth," he says, adding that he is neither a businessman nor an inventor. "I'm a solution provider," he says.

The margin comes from charging the cost of a product and the needs of the producer. The needs strictly exclude greed, he says. The man who barely finished Class X and was forced to drop out after his father's death was prompted to try his hand at making affordable sanitary napkins when he found his wife making pads with old clothes.

Then began his research for a machine that could get him napkins of international standards. It made him go to the extent of feigning menstruation by stuffing a leaking pouch filled with goat's blood in his clothes and wearing napkins to empathise fully with women's needs.

His mother and his wife soon abandoned him, finding his behaviour shocking and unsound. Today, he says, his wife is back. "If President Pratibha Patil honours me as a guest at her house, won't my wife come back to me?" he asks.

He has refused to commercialise the machine he designed, saying its profits should go directly to poor women in villages and cities.

Muruganathan, who has already taken the machine to 23 states, is just back from Dantewada in Chhattisgarh where he set up women's groups in two villages and equipped them with the machine as well as a source of livelihood.

Ask about encounters with Maoists and he says, "They are everywhere. They laughed when they heard what I was doing."

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The rich are also backing him with CSR funds. In Angul in Orissa, Jindal Steel has sponsored six machines and in Bellary, JSW Steel has sponsored two units. In Bulandshahar in Uttar Pradesh, Du Pont has helped to set up a unit in a girls' school while Moserbaer has sponsored a unit in Delhi. Cairn and Henkl are also partners. The machine runs on power and mechanical energy and pounds cellulose into shape and sterilises it.

The machine is also helping women export napkins. A group in Thiruvananthapuram has been sending the napkins to Muscat. He wants to convert the raw material to organic form for an edge in the market.

Muruganathan is not done yet. He is now working on the next big problem. He cites the Prime Minister's recent malnutrition report and says he is already addressing it. He wants every poor dwelling to be a food producing unit. He is working on growing crops on alternative media such as rags and waste. This would help the landless grow food and keep children well nourished, he says like a veritable day dreamer, nay businessman.