Success Story of Indian Entrepreneur & Social Entrepreneur – The Real Padman

This Success Story of Indian Entrepreneur & Social Entrepreneur, Arunachalam Muruganantham (Padman) will inspire you.

We are sharing with you the Success Story of Indian Entrepreneur and Social Entrepreneur, Arunachalam Muruganantham (Padman & India’s menstruation man).

Arunachalam was born on 12 October 1961 to S. Arunachalam and A. Vanita in Coimbatore, Tamil Nadu India. His father was poor and handloom weavers.

His mother worked as a farm labourer to help in his studies. At the age of 14, Arunachalam Muruganantham dropped out of school. He took up various jobs as a yam-selling agent, machine tool operator, welder, and a farm laborer.

Arunachalam grew up in poverty after his father died in a road accident. Muruganantham supplied food to factory workers to support his family. He married to Shanthi In 1998.

Social entrepreneurial Journey – School Dropout to a Social Entrepreneur

Arunachalam discovered Shanthi,his wife collecting filthy rags to use during her menstrual cycle, as sanitary napkins.

Troubled by this, Muruganantham started designing experimental sanitary napkins. Initially, he made pads out of cotton, but his sisters and wife rejected these.

Eventually, they refused to be the test subjects for his innovations and stopped co-operating with him. Arunachalam looked for women who could test his inventions, but they were too shy. Most of the female volunteers did not ready to discuss their menstrual issues with him.

Muruganantham started testing it on himself and he distributed sanitary napkins to local medical college girls free of cost, hoping that they would give him feedback.

Arunachalam realised that the raw materials cost ₹10, but the product sold for ₹40 by multinational corporations.

He devised a low-cost sanitary pad-making machine that could be operating with minimal training.

It took two years to discover the commercial pad-making machine used cellulose fibers derived from pine bark wood pulp. The cellulose fibers helped the sanitary pads absorb while retaining shape.

The Invention of the low-cost sanitary pad-making machine

Arunachalam bought the processed pine wood pulp from Mumbai, under ultraviolet light; the sanitary pad-making machine would grind de-fibrate, press and sterilize the pads before packaging them for sale. This sanitary pad-making machine costs ₹65,000.

Finally, the social entrepreneur is the inventor of a low-cost sanitary pad-making machine.
Arunachalam invention of the low-cost sanitary pad-making machine is widely praised as a key step in changing women’s lives in India.

The low-cost sanitary pad-making machine has been praised for its simplicity and affordability, and his commitment to social aid has earned him several awards.

Muruganantham founded Jayaashree Industries and obtained seed funding. Jyaashree Industries is now marketing these machines to rural women across India.

Arunachalam Muruganantham visited The Indian Institute of Technology – IIT Madras to show his idea and receive suggestions in 2006.

IIT Madras registered his invention for the National Innovation Foundation’s Grassroots Technological Innovations Award and his invention won the award.

His affordable sanitary pads enable many more female volunteers to earn their livelihood during menstruation. His invention creates jobs and income for many rural women.

Despite his wide network of female volunteers and employees, Arunachalam personally travels to train women of rural areas to make sanitary pads in regions affected by extremism.

He received many commercial offers from several corporate entities but he is committed to social aid, he has refused, and decided to provide these sanitary pad-making machines to self-help groups (SHGs) run by women in rural areas. His commitment to social aid has earned him many prestigious awards.

Arunachalam’s work has also inspired many other young entrepreneurs to enter this area. Some social entrepreneurs propose to use bamboo or waste banana fiber for the purpose.

Muruganantham credited for generating awareness about traditional unhygienic practices around menstruation in rural India.

His low-cost sanitary pad-making machines, which can manufacture sanitary pads for less than a third of the cost of branded sanitary pads. His low-cost, mini-machines have installed in 23 states of India.

A school dropout, Muruganantham is planning to expand the production of the sanitary pad-making machine to 106 nations. Now he runs Arunachalam becomes well-known as a social entrepreneur in India.

Now he runs a company “Jayaashree Industries” in Coimbatore in the southern state of Tamil Nadu, supplying sanitary napkins in more than 5,000 villages and providing technology for his low cost hygiene sanitary pads to 21 other countries.

Arunachalam has given lectures on entrepreneurship development and shared his entrepreneurial success story at many institutions including Pilani, Goa Campus, Birla Institute of Technology and Science and Harvard University.

Muruganantham has also given lectures at IIM Ahmedabad, IIT Bombay, and IIM Bangalore. He has also given a TED talk.

Movies on Padman:

His success story was the subject of an award-winning documentary Menstrual Man directed by Amit Virmani. In 2017, Abhishek Saxena made the film Phullu.

Director R. Balki cast Radhika Apte, and Sonam Kapoor, and Indian actor Akshay Kumar, as Laxmikant Chauhan in a film based on Arunachalam Muruganantham’s life and present his social entrepreneurial journey from a school dropout to a social entrepreneur, titled Pad Man.

“Pad Man is the first Indian Hindi feature film that talks about women’s monthly period”

Period. End of Sentence
Menstrual Man
Pad Man
Phullu

Awards & Achievements:

• In 2006, he won an award from the President of India, Pratibha Patil.
• In 2014, Arunachalam Muruganantham was included in the list of 100 Most Influential People in the World by Time magazine.
• In 2015, writer, actor and director, Twinkle Khanna, featured him in her book “The Legend of Lakshmi Prasad”.
• In 2016, Arunachalam Muruganantham received the Padma Shri award by the Government of India.
• In the 2018 “Period” the movie, this directed by Amit Virmani won the Academy Award for Best Documentary.

Arunachalam Muruganantham was awarded “Jewel of Coimbatore” by Rotary Coimbatore metropolis.

People who are wishing to become a social entrepreneur, His motivational story may encourage you to solve the real-world problems or discover a unique idea.

We hope you find the success story of the Indian entrepreneur of the real Padman useful and inspiring through your social entrepreneurial journey and will keep you inspired.