香蕉树皮变护垫：哈佛创业冠军的印度梦

    你生命中还有没有什么事情可以跟这个奖项相提并论？

    除了赢得这项大赛，在我的人生中还有两件让我最兴奋的事情，其一是考入麻省理工学院——我一直梦想成为一位机械工程师，但从来没想到真的会有这样一个机会。另一件事情就是被哈佛商学院录取。说真的，我简直不敢相信，寻思着“是不是招生官员搞错了？”这就是我被这两所学校录取时的感受。

    对于这项事业，你有什么长远的规划？

    我们希望到今年年底能进入5个村庄。我们的商业模式是与农村妇女自助团体合作。这类团体由大约10名妇女组成，她们聚集在一起开创自己的小微企业。

    这些妇女需要花500美元从我们手中购买一台机器，她们3个月内就能偿还这笔款项。这可不是一个长达10年的投资。接下来，她们就能开始生产自己的护垫，经营自己的企业，管理自己的账簿。操作这台机器只需要两名妇女，剩下的8个人采用挨家挨户的配送模式在当地的社区销售这些护垫。

    我们的目标是拥有10000人口的村庄，这类村庄通常有大约2,700名处于月经年龄的妇女。一个村庄一台机器。我们希望这些妇女能够创办自己的企业。

    我们主要想解决3个问题：通过使用废弃的香蕉树纤维解决可承受性问题(affordability)；通过本土生产解决可得性问题(availability)；采用挨家挨户的配送模式和口碑营销来解决最大的一个问题——提升村民的意识(awareness)。

    我们的想法是，无论你住在哪个村庄，哪个国家，你的本地资源应该能够适应你的需求——无论这种资源是椰子纤维，还是纸莎草。这项事业的目的不仅仅是帮助农村妇女找到她们能够负担得起的护垫，我们其实还想让她们觉得自己到获得了权力，帮助她们经营自己的企业，提升她们的社会经济地位。

    我祖母就是在农村长大的，每个月总有几天不能去上学。因为那时候，女孩月经期间去上学是一种忌讳。她说，直到今天，想起这段往事，她还是很难过。知道我的家人曾经亲身经历过这种窘境，真是让人觉得荒唐可笑。如果我们最终能够解决这个问题，那对我们来说就是天大的成就。（财富中文网）

    译者：叶寒

    Is there anything you would compare it with?

    Other than winning this competition, the two most exciting things in my life were getting into MIT -- I always wanted to be a mechanical engineer, and I never thought there was a chance -- and honestly the same for HBS. You just never think you will. It's like, "Am I the admissions mistake?" I would say getting into those two schools is equivalent to this.

    What are your long-term plans for the business?

    By the end of this year we hope to be in five villages. The way our business model works is we partner with rural women self-help groups, which are groups of about 10 women that gather together to start their own microenterprises.

    These women will purchase a machine from us for $500 and they're able to repay that within three months. It's not like a 10-year investment. Then they will manufacture their own pads and run their own businesses, managing their own books and accounts. You need two women to operate the machine and the other eight to sell these pads in their local communities using a door-to-door distribution model.

    We're targeting villages with a population of 10,000 people, which corresponds to roughly 2,700 women of menstruating age in that village. The idea is one village per machine. We want these women to start their own enterprises.

    The main goal is to address the three A's: affordability (using waste banana tree fiber); availability (doing local manufacturing); and the biggest one is awareness (using door-to-door distribution and word-of-mouth marketing).

    The idea is that whatever village you're in, whatever country you're in, your local resources should be able to adapt to your needs – whether it's coconut fiber or papyrus. This is not just about finding affordable pads but really trying to help these rural women feel empowered, to run their own enterprises and move up the socioeconomic ladder.

    My grandmother grew up in a very rural village and missed school every month because it was taboo to go during this time. She says to this day it was something she was always upset about. To know that someone in my family went through this is ridiculous. If we can be the ones to solve this issue, it would mean the world to us.