Saral Designs made the pad factory small enough to localize

The Economic Times reported in 2016 that Saral Designs had an automatic machine making 10,000 pads a day and a Rs 24 ultra-thin pad priced Rs 10-15 below comparable products. Cofounder Suhani Mohan said such machines could be set up in every district.

MIT Solve later described the machine as a low-cost, modular technology producing up to 30,000 pads per day, with IoT monitoring, 70% less energy per pad than multinational machines, and flexibility across pad shapes, sizes and materials. Saral said the machine could be sold for under $35,000 and support local manufacturers and door-to-door distributors.

The clever pivot came after field learning. Saral's own 1000-day review said rural sales were nearly four times urban-slum sales, because women in remote areas faced four- or five-kilometer trips to buy pads. The company moved from a single Saral brand to a multi-brand local-machine model that let partners localize the product and price.

Shrink the factory, not the product

Automatic production solved the quality problem that small manual units struggled with.

Local machines avoided the bulky-product logistics and margin layers that raised prices.

Machine owners could adapt brand, pack size and price to local purchasing power.

Door-to-door distribution handled privacy and access, not just affordability.

When distribution makes a basic product expensive, decentralizing production can beat discounting: move the factory to the market and let local economics set the offer.

Saral extended the machine platform beyond pads. During COVID-19 it adapted Swachh equipment to make 3-ply masks; SAMRIDH said the company created a mask-making machine within a week of concept and distributed 4 million SITRA-certified masks to frontline workers with partners.