Saathi: A ‘Big, Bold Idea’ for Better Sanitary Pads

The Co-Founders Kristin Kagetsu and Tarun Bothra at Saathi

Saathi: How banana plant waste is turned into sanitary pads in India

Kristin Kagetsu co-founded Saathi, a sanitary pad company based in India, and built on nine of those sustainable development goals, including gender equality and sanitation for all.

Tarun Bothra is the Co-Founders & CTO at Saathi. He believes sustainability is important for our survival in the future and wants to give back to the masses. He is passionate about empowering women and removing the taboo associated with menstrual hygiene in India.

Saathi is combining both of these goals in providing a sustainable high-quality product to menstruators everywhere. With innovative technology and business models, Saathi sets a new standard for menstrual hygiene. He leads the R&D, Product Development, Technical, Legal & Corporate Operations teams of Saathi to develop the highest quality product and ensure that the supply chain is completely sustainable with zero impact on the environment.

“We built Saathi believing that good engineering and systems thinking can help solve social problems in a way that doesn’t have to compromise either profit or the planet,” said Kagetsu. “That means making pads from sustainable, renewable materials, making them accessible to women no matter where they live and working with other partners to make sure our products get upcycled.”

While menstruating is a natural, largely unavoidable part of life, sanitary products are expensive, can be difficult to source in rural or impoverished areas, and produce a lot of plastic pollution.

Saathi uses biodegradable and compostable banana and bamboo fiber to make its pads. Using a tiered business model, the company is able to subsidize pads for underserved people in rural India, where a 2016 survey found only 36% of women use sanitary pads.

We spoke with Kagetsu about Saathi’s mission, how she forms and tests ideas at the company, and Saathi’s “big, bold idea” to be a model for sustainable and responsible manufacturing.

Where do you get ideas?

I get ideas from observing how things work and imagining how they might be improved. During my first trip to India in college, I worked with a non-governmental organization in the Himalayas. We stayed in a remote village and there wasn’t any waste infrastructure; the waste had to be dealt with locally or else it would end up in random patches off the road and down the mountain. Knowing this and thinking about how we were going to address access to sanitary pads made me think twice about how our solution should try to address both issues. Instead of just trying to solve access with cheap and low-quality plastic pads, how could we develop something that wouldn’t later become a plastic waste problem?

How are new ideas discovered and developed in your organization?

We are inspired by many things, and our curiosity and willingness to discuss help the ideas grow and flourish. Everything from products to marketing is open for everyone across the team to contribute ideas and suggestions. We engage our marketing interns in brainstorming activities because they come from different backgrounds and sometimes different countries as well. We consider the resources we have and what is possible and then come up with a plan and work together to bring it to life. Some of the ideas are tried and tested, and some are done from scratch.

What is your idea made to impact the world?

How Banana Plant Waste Is Turned Into Sanitary Pads in India | World Wide Waste

In the long term, we plan to be a model for sustainable and responsible manufacturing of absorbent products. We believe in business as a tool to create impact, which is why we have built all of our impacts into our business model. Instead of looking at the waste problem after it is created, we’re addressing it from the source. We’re consciously choosing our materials to be biodegradable and compostable, and we’re working on ways to upcycle the pads in the long term.

Sharing this idea can create more impact not only for the women who don’t have access to sanitary pads but also for the farmers who get additional income working with us and the women we employ in our all-women manufacturing unit. We genuinely want to create a circular future because it is the need of the hour, and we believe that partnership and working together will move all of us toward this shared goal.

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