Aakar Innovations

It is a hybrid company, which serves the rural market, a social enterprise that
enables woman to manufacture and distribute affordable and high quality, 100%
compostable sanitary napkins within her communities while simultaneously
raising awareness and sensitization of menstrual hygiene management.
This company aims to break the silence around the topic of menstruation and
menstrual cycle and menstrual hygiene and provide knowledge and guidance
among all the stake holders especially adolescent girls.
Aakar became the number one and the first company to launch a 100%
compostable, high quality sanitary napkins, this was run under the name of
“ANANDI”.
Aakar’s mission is to make woman more and more aware about the menstrual
hygiene. And making high quality products for them so they can concentrate on
there future and be at their best. They can make effective choices and decision
and take charge of there own social-economical development.
Aakar provides provides commercially viable solutions for production,
distribution and marketing of sanitary pads which will be affordable and
environmental friendly by local business men in areas where these products are
not easily available.

The Team
Founder and managing director – JAYDEEP MANDAL.
Head finance – MAYANK JOSHI
Product head – MANMATHA MAHOTA
Field engineer – RAJAT MISRA
Senior admin associate – TEJAS MULUK
Investors – 1.VIVEK MATTHAL (FMCG Expert)
2. K.N VAIDYANATH .
Reasons why AAKAR INNOVATIONS was established
1. Today only 24% of India’s 350 million menstruating woman and girls
are using sanitary pads to manage their menstruation
2. In India still 300+ million female rely on old clothes, napkins and rags
to manage their menses and a small percentage of them use plastic,
sand, ashes to manage and address their sanitary needs during their
menstruation cycle.
3. A UNICEF report shows that menstruation causes more than 23% of
the girls to drop out of school once their menstruation cycle starts.
4. Around 70% of the Indian female cannot afford the high cost sanitary
napkins which is prevailing in the market currently and is dominating
the market currently.

AAKAR INNOVATIONS IS ENSURING :-

1. Environmental sustainability through the placement and promotion of
high quality and compostable sanitary napkins in the market and green
disposable system in the market.
2. Financial sustainability through Aakar’s business model and by
connecting the urban woman to the rural woman and girls.
3. Behavioural change communication program and sales through
Aakar’s trusting building curriculum, awareness curriculum and woman
centric aspects and female to female connection.
4. Customised machinery, here each mini factory consists of four to five
machines and two to three specialized tools and each is created and
customised by Aakar innovation
5. Employment, one mini factory provides employment to 15 women
directly in production process more of operations work and another 15 to
20 women indirectly through Aanandi pad sales commission.

In total Aakar Innovations consists of 40 units in total in India .

These 4o units are situated and established in 12 states.
Aakar Innovations provide employment opportunity and livelihood for more
than 500 women.
Aakar Innovations has more than fifteen thousand customers.
Disposability
The disposing method is very interesting here, these guys collect the waste
sanitary Aanandi pads as much they can collect usually they ask the consumers
to dispose it to a particular place and they collect it from there, after collecting it
they burry those waste sanitary pads in gardening ceramic pots with mud which
leads to increase in plantation and as well as waste reduction and efficient
disposable of waste. The pad gets disposed the composed in just six months
which is commendable.

Types of machines used

Pulverizer, is a mechanical machine which is used for the grinding of various
types of machines. It is used to grind coal for combustion in steam generating
furnaces of fossil fuel power plant.
Pressing machine, it is used to deform any workpiece materiel under high
pressure.
They also have manual setup which is easy to use but takes relatively more
time, they are slowly moving towards semi-automatic machines as more and
more income is generated.
Founder’s journey
Aakar innovations was incubated at the centre of innovation and creativity at
IIM Ahmedabad.
Jaydeep is all time enthusiastic person and always a entrepreneur at heart. His
passion to bring change made him standout from the crowd and that is the
reason Aakar was conceived at IIM Ahmedabad. As a social enterprise.
In college jaydeep worked closely with the founder of honeybee network prof.
Anil Gupta travelling across India identifying and analysing various
entrepreneurs across India, it was one these journey where he first with Mrs.
Murugnatham on whom the movie Padman is inspired, while still in college
doing his MBA got a chance to work on the machine developed by Mrs
murugnatham
The unit was setup in a village in Uttarakhand, a team of 10 were handling all
the work and was convincing people and making them understand the issues
behind a bad menstruation hygiene and encourage safe habits.
Jaydeep had participated in many other projects before working with
community and understanding the demand and the availability of supply he
knew he would have to a lot of work to make this project a successes. Learning
from the field he realised the need for new methods and business model to
address the issues related to menstrual cycle and sanitary pads.
He meet a lot of entrepreneurs who had low cost ideas to make sanitary napkins
across india, but as a student he had only so much amount of financial
resources, but his passion fuelled him to move forward, people he could not
meet he communicated with them online through video call or any other form of
communication
In the start, first 16 months went in building and setting up machines, operating
models, specification, technicalities, and challenges. While he was in
Afghanistan he conducted a month long study about Bhaglan province with Aga
khan foundation through which he became aware about the problems of
disposal, while interacting with afghan women he got to know the problem
faced by them in disposing of sanitary napkins. Due to closed community and
the shame and secrecy attached with the menstruation cycle the women there
are afraid to through the pads with other waste as it might be seen by others.
These challenged jaydeep to build a more eco solution and in 2013 Aakar
launched Aanadi a 100% compostable pad thus changing the whole game of
sanitary napkins market. Since then the product is in constant improvement.
Awards and recognition
1. DNA – 10\07\2016
2. THE HUFFGINGTON POST – 27\07\2016
3. YAHOO NEWS INDIA – 09\01\2015
4. THE ECONOMIC TIMES 29\12\2014
5. DEAL CURRY 09\12\2014
6. BUSINESS LINE 08\12\014
7. YOUR STORY 08\12\2014
8. VCCIRCLE 08\12\2015
Aakar innovations has featured in HINDUSTAN TIMES and MID-DAY.

Organisation they work with :-

1. ASSOCIATION OF LADY ENTREPRENEURS OF INDIA.
2. BANA PADS
3. CERA
4. CONSCIOUS
5. NARI GUNJAN
6. TATA INTERNATIONAL
7. JSW
8. MANIPAL FOUNDATION
9. NEW LIGHT
10.UPENDO WOMENS FOUNDATION
11.MAHILA ARTHIK VIKAS MAHAMANDAL
12.ZANA AFRICA
13.U-RESPECT FOUNDATION
4 P’s OF AAKAR INNOVATIONS