4 Entrepreneurship Lessons from India’s Menstural Man

Padman is a story of a simple man from Tamil Nadu who revolutionized the concept of menstrual hygiene in rural India by creating a low-cost sanitary napkins machine. The guy is the more is referred to as a ‘Superhero’ in the movie and here are 4 entrepreneurship lessons to be learned from him:-

1. Every problem is an opportunity to invent something new
   Having a solution mindset is important and it need not necessarily be in your area of work. Muruganantham identified that his wife was using a dirty rag during her periods which could potentially lead to serious illness in the future. So he decided to create low cost sanitary napkins, not only for his wife but for the women of the entire nation. He was a small time welder but his background or qualifications did not deter him from devoting 20 years of his life on a mission to bring change in the world.
2. Try Try until you succeed
   Perseverance is the key to success. Muruganantham says, at the age of 29, he touched a sanitary napkin for the first time. From making his first napkin using cotton and cloth to being the first man to wear a pad to being ostracized from his village, and even getting almost divorced, he fought all the barriers until he achieved his aim.
3. Big things start small
   Be fearless, have a vision, believe in yourself, and stay focussed is pretty much what sums up Murugannatham’s success.
   He started his journey in order to find a solution to his wives’ monthly problem and during his expedition, he discovered that multinationals are using $Mn plants to produce pads. But his focus and determination to bring menstrual hygiene led to his invention of the machine that costed barely $1000 and produced world class sanitary pads at an affordable cost.  
4. You don’t need a degree to be successful
   Muruganantham’s story is an example of what determination can do! A college dropout showed the way to the world and brought Red Revolution.

   Padman is a superhero. Be like Padman! 

Short form content for a long innings ahead

Bitten by the ‘Binge’ bug yet?  ‘Binge watching’ may not have assumed epidemic proportions yet but it sure is firming its grip on global audiences.

According to a research by a leading portal, 73% of Americans have binge-watched video content (watching three or more episodes in one sitting). That increases to 90% for viewers aged 14 to 33, with 40% of them reporting they binge-watch weekly. These younger binge watchers indulge in an average of six episodes, or five hours of content, in one sitting.
Binge is not a phenomenon. It is a change in consumer behavior. Triggered by high internet penetration rates and availability of a plethora of video streaming services, this trend is fast becoming an alternative to television viewing, especially in Singapore with its high Internet penetration rate.

The viewers now mine for content like news, sports, entertainment etc. across social media and other on demand content streaming platforms like Netflix, Amazon Prime, HOOQ, YouTube etc. The idea is to find valuable content that would impart some useful knowledge. This explains the proliferation of YouTube channels dedicated to cooking, travel, lifestyle, fashion DIY, etc.

The number of platforms competing for the viewer’s attention is overwhelming. Not only are the consumption habits changing, the intensity of the attention paid to the streaming content has diminished. Thanks to multitasking. On an average, an individual carries out four simultaneous additional activities, including text messaging, social media, and web browsing.

Taking the cue from viewer fragmentation, we decided to experiment with short format content at Zee TV and launched Make It Snappy, a cooking show with bite-sized episodes of 5 minutes each. The show features a celebrity chef, Sarab Kapoor and targets NRI population who are living away from the family
and are looking for quick fixes when it comes to food.

This vignette format started as an experimental step in 2016 and had yielded good results from both, viewership and revenue generation point of view. Another hook that gives us higher engagement is co-branded content. The 12 episode series showcases guest chefs in every alternate episode who then become our brand advocates and help in spreading the message out to a wider audience. The episodes are also uploaded to our Youtube channel after the telecast for all time accessibility.

   

Short form content is programmed for millennials or Gen Z and looking at how much time they spend watching digital videos, particularly on their mobiles, it’s clear that’s where the viewer is headed, and it’s only going to increase in the next few years. And this trend will reflect on the TV industry too. The content is bound to get shorter and better.

 

 

Every home tells a story :)

Have you seen the Asian Paints newly released Digital Film titled #HomesNotShowrooms ?

How much it reminds me of my good old days in Singapore. We rented a fully furnished apartment on the 16^th floor with a breath-taking view of the Singapore skyline. It was a beautiful house.

For the first time ever I was living in a rented house and our landlord was a very strict guy. We were handed a list of do’s and don’ts by him and our agent shared some ugly stories of how some of the previous tenants lost their security deposit by not abiding by it. We didn’t want to get into an ugly situation so we didn’t do up the house. Didn’t add any new furniture. Didn’t add any new furnishings. Did not even hang any photos of us. And as a result, we could never feel at home.

We spent about a year in that house and decided to move on. We could never get attached to it cause home is not just beautiful, but comfortable and personal as well.