Saral Design Solutions Private Limited

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Our model is driven by high speed innovation and sustainable unit economics. Uniqueness of SWACHH lies in the following aspects: -

1. Our patented technology enables production of 30,000 pads/ day (30 times more than other low cost set-ups). 

2. Healthy unit economics ensures 35-40% gross margin to the manufacturer and 30% distribution margin to the NGOs/ Healthcare workers. SWACHH has capacity to create local jobs in production and sales as well as provide healthy income/ incentives to everyone in the supply chain. 

3. New age, high quality biodegradable sanitary pad which is easy to carry and dispose are made available to the consumers at half the price of comparable global brands. 

4. The machine has been designed in such a way that it could produce customised pads, as per the local demand which can vary in shape, size and raw material components.  

1. The machine is designed on Aluminium frames that makes the machine light weight and modular which allows flexibility for customization like using different types of raw materials, size and shape options. This also allows us to use raw materials that are produced locally reducing the supply chain

2. The machine is pneumatically driven. Reducing the dependency on motor drive, the machine consumes 70% less energy per pad as compared to machines used by multinational brands. Since there is no heat produced, there is zero water wasted in the process compared to 500k Litres of water wasted per week in machines used by multinational brands

3. We use Internet of things to track production rate, and machine performance remotely. This helps in providing maintenance services to our decentralized units in different geographies

4. We have a range of machines production rate options of 6, 16 and 30 pads per minute allowing flexibility of solution as per population of the community

There are 355million menstruating women and girls in India. The model  followed by our company is based on 4As- Awareness, Affordability, Accessibility and Advocacy. As a social enterprise we are looking into setting-up machines along with creating a ripple effect in menstrual hygiene space that would make women and girls live a healthy and dignified life, where menstruation will no more be treated as a disability. With this project we are looking forward to influencing 21 million lives in a country where affordability and accessibility of menstrual hygiene products is a challenge and we are solving this through our 4A approach. Although we reach out to 21 million, we expect that each woman will influence at least 2 more in her family, impacting 63 million. In our observation and through endline survey have seen that if a girl is empowered, she directly influences two other women in her life.

Since its inception in 2015, Saral has set up 21 machines across India and other low-income countries with the help of local entrepreneurs and local NGOs. This has lead to opening up employment opportunities for 126 local men and women across these 21 geographies. In India alone, in the last 4 years, we have established a network with 30 corporates and NGOs for imparting awareness on menstrual hygiene having impacted the lives of 15,000 adolescents and reached out to 350 villages through 100 local health workers. 

With support from Grand Challenges Canada (GCC), we are reaching out to 51,000 adolescent girls and women through sessions on MHM as well as last mile product deliver in India across six geographes. With support from Millennium Alliance we are contributing towards improving the menstrual hygiene situation in Nepal by reaching out to 38,000 girls and women in two years. Our larger aim to improve menstrual hygiene of 21 million girls and women in the next five years. 

In the next one year we are planning to set up 30 automatic machines across India and by the next five years, we are aiming to have production units in each of the 600 districts of India. Through our five year plan, we will be impacting lives of 21 million women and girls by imparting menstrual hygiene awareness and last mile service delivery. This will also lead to creating job opportunities for 88,000 local women who will go door-to-door for distributing sanitary napkins and 3600 women and men will be employed in each of the production unit. While there are 200 million women without access to menstrual hygiene in India, we hope to create a multiplier effect through the families and neighborhoods of our beneficiaries.

As we plan to scale to 600 districts of India in the next 5 years, we need to identify scalable financing solutions for setting up manufacturing units for local entrepreneurs. As of now, while loan financing solutions are available for small scale businesses in India, the process is extremely long and inaccessible in remote areas. Thus, typically, it takes 2-3 months for a local entrepreneur to arrange for financing for setting up manufacturing. Also, it restricts the geographies where these machines are currently being set-up.

By raising an adequate amount of working capital and grant capital, we can provide credit to the machine buyers by taking only a part of the entire payment upfront and remaining over time with options like profit sharing per sanitary pad. We are currently looking at a similar model in Nepal with the help of fund support from Millenium Alliance (USAID, UKAID) where the machine partner is only making a part of the machine payment upfront and remaining by profit sharing per sanitary pad sold. This capital can be raised through local CSR grants, government grants, working capital debt, impact bonds etc.

Currently, Saral Designs has 30 full-time employees and one graphic consultant for designing marketing material.

• Suhani Mohan:  Designation- Founder and CEO; Total experience- 96 months. 

Background: Materials Science Engineer, IIT Bombay, investment banker Deutsche Bank and Acumen Fellow. TEDx speaker, Forbes Trailblazer, Outlook Magazine 25 most powerful women in impact

• Kartik Mehta- Designation- Founder and CTO ; 

Total experience- 84 months.  Background: Design Engineer, IIT Madras, General Motors and Neubauplan. 

We are a bunch of 30 young, passionate individuals from diverse backgrounds such as Mechanical, Electrical and Materials Science Engineering from IITs to public health, medical science, sociology to finance, operations and marketing. We bring our diversity collectively to design a better future in menstrual hygiene.

The uniqueness of the team also comes from the varied cultural background of the team members who are vehemently working towards a common goal of improving menstrual hygiene situation of women and girls in low-income countries. 

Our partners include 20+ local entrepreneurs and NGOs in tier-2,3 towns across 6 developing countries who are interested in setting up a local manufacturing unit of sanitary napkin. They are free to use their own local brands in vernacular content. Providing co-branding, localization of product and content increase our compatibility for partnerships across geographies. Since we provide education on menstrual hygiene, we often collaborate with Corporates and NGOs to conduct awareness sessions on menstrual hygiene management in schools and communities along with distribution of sanitary napkins. 

We have 5 sources of revenue for the Company:

1. Sale of SWACHH machines (upfront) to non-profits, and small businesses

2. Sale of raw materials for SWACHH buyers (ongoing)

3. Direct Pad Sales to women customers 

4. Training services to women distributors

5. Awareness services in schools and communities

The above channels help us focus of the 4As holistically completing the loop from local production to ongoing services to ensure sustainability of these units, supporting a local distribution network and creating awareness in the last mile to increase demand.

This business model ensures our product has a better reach that other companies fail to achieve, creates awareness on menstrual hygiene and health in rural areas, and also provides income to the families of the women distributors, hence bringing change to the community holistically.

We work on a hybrid model:

In our for-profit model, we sell the machine and raw materials to our machine buyers. Since 2019, we are cash flow positive and our gross margins on machines cover our operational overheads.

For our not for profit activities, of awareness, training and advocacy, we either work in collaboration with other Non-profits or raise grant capital.  We currently are using grant capital for working on training women for creating a local distribution networks and raising awareness around menstrual hygiene. 

In the long term, we hope that with growing awareness, there is a ripple effect which gets created which makes communities self reliant for menstrual hygiene knowledge delivery to adolescents. With scale, the net profits shall also grow, which will enable us to cover the costs of maintaining the distribution networks without external grant capital.

We believe with the help of SOLVE we will be able to access a global network of change makers and innovators which can support  us scaling our technology and maximise impact.

There are several small and large organisations that are working in menstrual hygiene education and access who can benefit from the technology that we have developed specially keeping the requirements of a developing country at the centre. With the help of the grant support and access to other grant making organisations, we will get closer to fulfilling our aim towards providing training to 88,000 local heathworkers over the next 5 years.

Local entrepreneur interested in improving menstrual hygiene situation in their respective geographies. 

Through 4A approach- Awareness, Accessibility, Affordability and Advocacy, we are planning to bring a revolution in the sphere of menstrual hygiene by partnering with organisations working in this sphere for example- local government, civil society organisations, local entrepreneurs and CSRs who are working towards developing sustainability in menstrual hygiene. For us, catalyst would be an organisation that has goals aligned to ours which would be CSRs that can support our innovations to reach last mile and maximise our reach.

Multinationals produce high-quality pads centrally that are non-biodegradable and through several layers of distribution, increases the cost of pads by 40-60% with low availability in remote regions. Small-scale manufacturers have made pads affordable; but lack of adequate scale of production and technology, makes quality of product inconsistent, often bad & unit economics per pad is unhealthy for sustainability. Due to the inferior quality of pads, retention of customer base is also low. 

Our machine innovation is low cost (<USD 35,000) and can be set-up in each district to cater to the demand of 36,000 women and girls. At this scale of production, each pad can be sold at half the price of comparable multinational products, while having a 20% gross profit margin for the manufacturer and 20% distribution margin for the D2D sales women.

With the help of the GM grant, we can scale our activities to drive awareness, training and advocacy for women for creating a local distribution. These activities will cover local geographies around each of our production units of sanitary napkins. Providing co-branding, localization of product and content increase our compatibility for partnerships across geographies. With the help of the grant support, we will get closer to fulfilling our aim towards providing training to 88,000 local heathworkers over the next 5 years.

In India only 45% girls and women have access to a basic necessity like sanitary napkin, while rest use unhygienic materials like husk, dried leaves, etc. Products produced by multinationals are not accessible in tier-2,3 towns and due to multiple layers of distribution the costs goes up. 

71% girls do not have knowledge on menstruation and about 20% girls drop-out of school due to inaccessibility to safe sanitation and hygiene products. 

Our innovation aims a solving menstrual hygiene problem in India and middle and low income countries through 4A approach (Awareness, Accessibility, Affordability and Advocacy). This is a holistic approach  wherein we collaborate with organisations, institutions, individuals and agencies aligned with out goal of improving this situation. Our aim is to impact lives of 21 million girls and women in next five years and we believe Innovation for Women Prize will help us towards achieving this goal.