Ajinkya Dhariya, Founder and CEO, Padcare Labs
Image: Neha Mithbawkar for Forbes India
Ajinkya Dhariya asked me, “How many years do you think it takes for sanitary napkins to decompose?” A couple of years, I said. Dhariya responded, “You will not believe this, but it takes 800 years for unrecycled pads to decompose.”
In 2018, Dhariya was visiting a landfill near Pune, when he saw ragpickers picking up used sanitary napkins and diapers with their bare hands. Dhariya couldn’t believe what he had seen. “Imagine the kind of health risk,” he says, “This was the trigger point for me, I knew I had to do something about this problem.” This is what led him to start Padcare Labs.
(This story appears in the 24 February, 2023 issue of Forbes India. To visit our Archives, click here.)