“I wish I could just stand and pee”
That sure makes a quote, a widely used one! In India where washroom hygiene is nothing that fits in the category of clean, it becomes a task for females to relieve themselves especially while travelling.
Pee-Buddy, a Delhi based start-up, provides women hygiene and intimate care products to enhance the lifestyle of Indian women.
The Idea
“We were four couples on a road trip from Delhi to Jaipur, sometime in 2014. The ladies made the trip a hell by complaining about unclean toilets. One of them said that she wished she was in Europe where they could get reusable devices to urinate in dirty toilets”, says Deep Bajaj.
Deep couldn’t mute the resonating comment. “We laughed it off in that moment. However, I couldn’t rule the idea out. I decided to build a similar product in India, however a re-usable one, catering to Indian mindset”, he explains. Pee-Buddy is a very helpful product for women who are pregnant or are suffering from arthritis.
The Product
Pee-Buddy is a waterproof paper-made funnel can be folded and carried in bags like any other accessory. The product is designed in a way that it fits between the legs and allows the user to urinate without any spills or leaks.
“A pack of 10 costs INR 200 and a packet of 20 costs INR 375”, Deep says. The product is available online from their website as well as e-commerce sites.
[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F70V2STByDU]
In the market
“We believed that the device was one of its kind in India and people would readily embrace it since it solved a major problem”, says Deep. However, the product saw few social barriers, which even recommendations from doctors and customers couldn’t break.
“We tried pitching it to leading stores but they refused to place our product in the rack, may be because we were talking about women standing and peeing”, he points. However, the founders of Pee-Buddy were confident about the idea and determined to solve the problem.
Despite being shown the door for more than a few times, what made them stick?
“Our interactions with females always pointed to the fact that there was a need for the product, which traditional men thought was funny. We had seen it ourselves during our trip”, says Deep whose idea received a welcoming response from national brands who readily stacked Pee-Buddy products in their outlets. “If a toilet doesn’t match her standards, she will use our product. If it does, she won’t. Who are others to decide whether it is a necessity for her or not? I won’t be surprised if a fanatic comes down to my place in protest, but that hasn’t happened yet”, he adds.
The product has received attention from men who are buying the products for their mothers & grandmothers. Men, says Deep, have confessed they haven’t had such a conversation with their mothers ever, but because they liked the idea of the product, they bought it.
“Right now, our major focus is to reach out to more and more stores and women”, says Deep talking about Pee Buddy’s future plans.
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