Businessman

My wife was gone, all other girls failed to cooperate, so I decided to wear a pouch of animal blood myself and test out my pads by wearing them myself. The discomfort I felt for those five days cannot be explained in words; I bow to every woman on earth for going through this every month.

'Padman' was about my early life and struggles, including my wife calling me a psycho and leaving me.

The idea came from my wife, since in our village, women cannot afford to buy sanitary pads. When I asked my wife, she told me we would have to cut down half of our milk budget to buy sanitary pads. Moreover, while raw materials for sanitary pads cost 10 paise, the end product was sold for 40 times that price. So, I decided to create it on my own.

I know that if I had got educated, I might have ended up as a call-center employee.

Social entrepreneurship is like a butterfly, sucking honey from a flower, but the flower won't die. They're helping the flower to make pollination.

I have accumulated no money but I accumulate a lot of happiness. If you get rich, you have an apartment with an extra bedroom - and then you die.

The taboo regarding menstruation exists across the world, even among the educated.

I am becoming a solution provider. I'm very happy. I don't want to make this as a corporate entity. I want to make this as a local sanitary pad movement across the globe.

The world has a shortage of solution providers. Everybody want to be in the 'Forbes' list.

We keep discussing nuclear power and other issues, but we should spare a thought to the basic needs of our women.

My wife gone, my mum gone, ostracised by my village. I was left all alone in life.

When I work in the remotest villages, it reminds me of who I am... India is not built on 14 metros and 100 cities. It's made up of 600,000 villages.

The strong creation created by God in the world is not the lion, not the elephant, not the tiger - the girl.

The most difficult thing is changing people's mindset.

When I tell a foreign audience that 90 per cent of Indian women have no access to sanitary napkin, there is a visible disbelief. But there is hardly a ripple when I say the same thing to an Indian crowd.

I never thought someone would make a film on my story.

Every year, in our country, we churn out more job seekers rather than job creators. We have to look at new business models, identify a problem, and work on a solution for the same. Today, the machines I have created have provided employment to many women in the rural areas across the country. Why can't youngsters follow suit?

The choice is yours: Do you want to exist, or do you want to live?

I may fail today, but if I have another idea tomorrow, maybe it will work.