Name of the Department: IIC Council

Date: 24 November 2020

Time and duration: 11 AM- 1.00 PM

Venue: Online

Resource Person with affiliation: TanviJohri, Founder, Carmesi

Topic on which activity was organised: “Making Plant Based Pads” Number of Participants: Students 601 faculty 8

Objective of the Workshop/Seminar/Activity: The objective of the session was to make the students aware about IIC, Social entrepreneurship, to apprise the participants with the scope of social entrepreneurship and to give the insights about the Journey of a Social Entrepreneur Ms. TanviJohri who is the founder of Carmesi.

Report of the activity: About the event: IISU-IIC organized a session on “Making Plant Based Pads”. The orientation of IIC started with the basic introduction by Dr. Aditi R. Khandelwal. After that Dr. Amita Sharma took the session forward with the basic introduction about IIC i.e., Institution’s Innovation Council. Dr. Amita Sharma told that IIC has been designed to inculcate the innovative ideas and to bring more business awareness among the students. MHRD and Govt. of India have established MIC (MHRD’s Innovation Cell) to systematically foster the culture of innovation amongst all the Higher Education Institutes. The main mandate of MIC is to encourage, inspire and nurture the young talent so they can bring their innovative ideas to the current or the future problem and to inspire them to convert those problems into business prototypes. Bringing the session forward Dr. Amita Sharma also told that the major focus of IIC is to create a vibrant local innovation ecosystem, start-up supporting mechanism in HEIs, establish function ecosystem for scouting ideas and pre-incubation ideas and develop better cognitive ability for technological students. Dr. Amita Sharma discussed the functions of IICs. The functions were like to conduct various activities related to innovation, identify and reward innovation and share success stories so it will motivate the students, organize periodic workshops/ seminars/ interactions with entrepreneurs, investors and professionals related to idea building competition with the help of hackathons so that the student will get involved in all these activities and it may help them develop their idea, etc. Most of the Science students get confused that why are they learning about all these as this is not related to their curriculum, so for Dr. Amita gave some example of certain startups which has been developed by the science background people only. There was a startup named “RaGaVeRa Indic Technologies” owned by A.G. Ramakrishnan, a professor in electrical engineering, which basically offers text-to-speech synthesis for Indian language. There was another example of “FruWash emulsion” owned by HM Chawla from the IIT which is based on developing a biodegradable emulsion that can increase the shelf life of fruit and vegetables without refrigeration from three to six weeks. The main purpose of showing these ideas is to motivate the science students that if they have any business idea then they can also go for a startup and full support with the guidance will also be provided to them. After the brief introduction of IIC the interactive session got started. Aditi ma’am welcomed Ms. TanviJohri Co-founder and CEO of Carmesi. Carmesi is an e-commerce brand for all-natural sanitary pads, founded by TanviJohri and Rikshav Borah, with a vision to make periods a ‘safe’ time of the month for women. She has also won the award of women entrepreneur of the year 2020, Forbes India 30 and Forbes Asia 30 in 2019. The interactive session started from the basic introduction of sanitary pads which are of two types synthetic and cotton and the startup is based on sanitary pads only. After Ms. Tanvi discussed about her startup’s name which is Carmesi, it is a Spanish word represents color crimson which is the color of blood and they named it that way because they wanted to make a dent in how menstrual hygiene has been functioning for so many decades. Ms. TanviJohri told that when she started the company, she herself didn’t know that sanitary pads which we are currently using are not made up of cotton this all are made up of plastic which are not comfortable and good for our health. Ms. TanviJohri got to know about this after reading an article that most of the sanitary pads are made up of cotton and she being the user of that for so many years thought that it was actually made up of cotton which she is using in the term of sanitary pad. Ms. TanviJohri also floated a survey among the women and the result was surprising 98% of the women thought that the composition of the sanitary pad is cotton but in reality, it is made up of plastic. Carmesi is a brand which wants to change the way we are using the period products; it wants to bring the issue to the surface which are being faced by the women during the periods. Ms. TanviJohri explained that mostly women are facing irritation or itching while in period, the only reason for that is because the pads are made up of plastic and this plastic rubs against your skin and they have harmful synthetics and chemicals that remains in touch with the most delegate part in our body for a minimum of 5-6 days. For this issue, they started to translate the product which is much safer for women without the use of plastic and harmful chemicals. Ms. TanviJohri also cleared the doubt which were in our mind that all the big brands of sanitary pads advertise that their pads are made up of cotton but the word which they use is not exactly cotton it is cottonee, when they advertise they never say that it is cotton they said it feels like cotton and it definitely position themselves in our mind that yes the pads are made up of cotton which is our biggest misconception. Ms. Tanvi Johri discussed about the process of manufacturing of pads that the pads were made up with the help of corn. The process includes that the corn translated into corn starch and it has a lot of purposes because it is a naturally soothing and an anti-bacterial product. It is a little bit expensive to make because it is a natural product rather then a bulk plastic material. Ms. Tanvi Johri gave the introduction about her another product which is similar to the sanitary pads that is panty-liner. We can say that it is a mini version of a sanitary pad which we can use every day because some of the women are facing continuous vaginal discharge which maintains the proper hygiene. Ms. Tanvi Johri discussed the biggest challenge which exist in the female hygienic industry is awareness, women were not getting that why are they were saying a very costly product and why they should buy it. Another challenge she discussed was about that most of the women do not have access to sanitary pad which can be very dangerous to their health as they are using clothes which is highly unhygienic and can cause various diseases. Another was to conditioned women that sanitary pad is also very important, it is as important as you are conscious for your skin and you body. Ms. Tanvi Johri discussed about the availability of their products, which is currently totally digital and available on Amazon Prime, Nykaa, Purple, Big Basket and also available on their website. They are marketing the product digitally only, they are basically targeting working women, and college going audience and these all are very comfortable with buying product online, reading about them online. They try to do it in a way that the women feel empower and not feel ashamed of it. At the end of the session there were a Question & Answer session in which students asked their queries to Ms. Tanvi Johri.

Outcome: Ms. Tanvi Johri described that her company exist for making a change in women’s life. They are offering fully safe product for women for every month’s problem which women are facing. Before Carmesi, there were no alternative for women to go for if they are looking for safe and gentle product. With the products they are also providing reliable information related to PCOS, vaginal discharge, when to consult a gynecologist, why are they having irregular periods and many more. It is not only the product that they sell, they also stand for educating the women so that they will feel more empower, more in control of themselves with the confidence and knowledge to stand up for themselves which is very important. She gave the insight that only 20% of the women in India use sanitary pads which is the lowest, so they initiated Unified red in which they give a part of every purchase to various NGOs they are partnered with. This money goes in menstrual education, to slum areas, to rural area and educates them about menstrual hygiene products. They also donate pads to those women who cannot afford to buy; they also worked with special children who were not taught by their parents, who don’t have the ability to learn the skills early in their lives. The overall session was very enlightened for the audience.