Udaipur brothers make machine to produce sanitary pads at low cost

Two engineer brothers in Udaipur have come up with a low-cost sanitary pad-making machine which they claim makes a pad at 90 paise, the lowest in the country.

Abdul Kadir Khan, 25, and Aleem Khan, 22, have made the machine, which is semi-automatic and easy to operate. The cost of the machine is Rs 1,00,000 and it has the capacity to produce 1200 pads in a day.

Kadir, a mechanical engineer, said he and his brother have been making the machine for the last three years and the cost of one pad is 0.90 paise. He said they faced challenges initially. “I invested money from my salary to develop the machine as I found no investors.”

Later the brothers opened their own company, Shahnaz Enterprises, named after their mother.

Asked about the inspiration behind the project, Kadir said, “I learnt that a large number of women use cloth during menstruation as they cannot afford the expensive pads available in the market. Due to this they face health and hygiene problems. That set me thinking to make low-cost sanitary pads and later my brother Aleem also joined me in my project”.

Kadir has set up some units at nearby villages where women can get sanitary pads at cheap rate. He said he manufactures the machines for government departments, NGOs and also for women who want to start their own business of making sanitary pads.

The duo is now working on making bio-degradable pads that will have seeds of different plants in them and which when buried in mud will produce a plant in 45 days.

“The cost is coming to be around Rs 3 per unit but we are trying to bring this down to Rs 1.50 per unit,” Kadir said.

Uttarakhand and Bengal governments have procured some of the machines, Kadir said.