68 % of Indian rural women cannot afford sanitary napkins hence they ended up following unhygienic sanitary practices like cloths, sand and ash which made them vulnerable to infections and diseases. The scenario was severe in eastern parts of India where the percentage of non-affordability increased to 83 %.
The major players in the market included Johnson & Johnson, Procter & Gamble, Kimberly Clark Lever Ltd., Gufic Bioscience, Dima Products. They served the under tapped market. As seen there was a huge potential especially in rural Indian market but the major problems that these manufacturers were facing was creation of awareness & reach of product to customers and efficient distribution cycle.
Considering the major problem of awareness, choosing the sanitary napkin without wings was the better option for UNICEF as then the cost of the product would be low and also additional effort in creation of awareness about the winged pads could be avoided.
In order to reach those women and more importantly to create awareness, UNICEF was continuously working with various NGOs in different blocks. Main motive of the Deepshikha program was to make adolescent girls and women aware of self sanitization, motivate them to use better sanitation products like sanitary napkins and be open about this body process. In order to help these women, many production units of localized sanitary napkin brands( e. g. Sakhi, Nirmal etc.) had been started by various agencies like Jalswarajprakalp in association with UNICEF.
After the successful running of production unit at Jehur unit in Solapur district( the unit was run by enterprising women of Self help group), UNICEF & SACRED wanted to start a similar kind of unit in Bhokardan block. The unit, if successfully started & efficiently run by selected Self Help Group, would be able to serve the demand created through awareness meetings( mahilamandals, kishorivarg etc.) in 125 villages of Bhokardan as well as act as a production hub to cater to the demands in other blocks where programs of UNICEF were being undertaken and run by different NGOs.
The initial task was to select the location for production unit setup and then selecting Self Help Group who would be ready to take this task forward.
SELECTION OF PLACE AND SELF HELP GROUP( SHG)
Jalna district is basically known for scarcity of water( because of geographic conditions and lack of mountains around). The major requirement for starting a production unit for sanitary napkins is that of water. Kedarkheda is geographically located at 20.27 ° N
75.77 ° E and is situated on the banks of confluence of Girija & Khelna Rivers. Also the two public wells usually have had good amount of water. Major crisis was faced during months of May & June during which government and private tankers were the only options. Also, its proximity to highway, proximity to Rajur which is a famous pilgrimage place and one of the biggest markets as well as good connectivity to Bhokardan made it an ideal location as far as production of sanitary napkins was considered.
After finalization of place, during visit to Kedarkheda in the month of January, Mr. Jayant held talks with 2 SHGs in order to gauge their interest and ability in undertaking this task of set up & running of production unit. The SHG who would be working with SACRED in this project was“ Sant Muktabai Bachatgat”. The SHG had 20 members attached to it. Out of these 20 members 8 members would be working for this production unit. This self help group had all like-minded women who were ready to take challenges and were keen to deliver. Though they did not possess any technical knowledge or domain expertise of the production unit, Mr. Jayant felt that by imparting specific trainings related to work & behavior these women would be able to make the production unit a success.
RAW MATERIAL SOURCE
The Raw material would be sourced from Coimbatore from the existing supplier who procured material in bulk from US and Canada so as to serve more than 50 similar napkin manufacturing machines that had been installed all over the country. Tie up with a transporter company like Professional courier( present in Jalna) of Indian Postal office who had recently launched a scheme of bulk transport for business units, needed to be done on priority in order to maintain steady transport of raw material & avoid shortages while also taking care of the hygiene requirements. The cost of transporting the material from Coimbatore to the manufacturing site has been incorporated in the cost calculation as shown in Exhibit 2. Jalna has been predominantly a district known for cotton production & hence locally available cotton could be used for production of pulp but for that to be incorporated the pulp making machinery and technology was needed to be installed. This could be considered depending on demand at a later stage. The local suppliers that had been identified proved to be expensive. Yet alternate raw material sources were being looked into so as to reduce the transportation costs as well as the risk of a single supplier source.( See Exhibit 2 for costing details of the raw materials used for production.)
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