Businessman

To help my mother, I started working as a workshop helper. There I learned welding and other tools.

To break the age-old taboos and to see girls and women use pads was a difficult task.

I am the son of a hand-loom weaver. I have a connection with yarn. I thought, 'Why not try to make an affordable sanitary pad for my wife?'

I'm ecstatic to be known as pad man, as it makes a difference to women's lives.

I have not hung a single award on my walls, including the Padma Shri.

My argument is that there is already an automated machine to make pads. What I did - I reverse-engineered it to 'simple.' Anyone who wants to compete will have to come out with a simpler machine.

Imagine: I got patent rights to the only machine in the world to make low-cost sanitary napkins - a hot-cake product. Anyone with an MBA would immediately accumulate the maximum money. But I did not want to. Why? Because from childhood, I know no human being died because of poverty - everything happens because of ignorance.

Luckily, I'm not educated. If you act like an illiterate man, your learning will never stop.

It took me eight years of trial and error to design the machines that would make low-cost pads: just Rs 2 each, compared to those made by the MNCs that are priced anywhere above Rs 6 to Rs 100.

There are two kinds of students: those who study and work to survive, while others who want to be achievers.

Wherever I went and spoke about menstrual hygiene, I was beaten up by people. I used to cover my cheeks with both my hands whenever I went to speak on the subject, so how could I ever imagine that someone would make a film on such a topic?

I always say, 'Be near science and technology, and you will never fail.'

There should be awareness on menstrual hygiene among men as well.

Even if I can take sanitary napkins to 10% of the poor women in India, it will be big achievement.

I got married at 24. It was an arranged marriage.

You can send women to the Moon or Mars later. First, provide sanitary pads to them.

The government should include menstrual hygiene in the curriculum.

I suffered a lot when I tried to make sanitary napkins and promote the idea. My family - including my mother and wife - deserted me. Villagers even tied me to a tree and beat me. But after seeing me successful now, they come and say that they all knew that I would become famous one day.

If you chase a girl, the girl won't like you. Do your job simply, the girl will chase you.

A male can be a boy, a man, a love/husband, a father, a grandfather, a great-grandfather, but they don't have any knowledge what's happening inside a woman's body. That's what I had learnt in my early married life.