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Resource centre on India's rural distress
 
 

Women can finally take a stand on urinating in public toilets -Usri Basistha
-Tehelka

PeeBuddy is India’s first attempt at solving the health issue of contracting UTI (Urinary Tract Infection) every time a woman reluctantly decides to use a toilet of dubious sanitary standards in a public establishment.

This is a country where 1.2 billion of its populace is used to not having proper public toilets, and women are more susceptible to assaults because they do not have a toilet in their homes. Hence, it was almost laughable to demand that women in the urban addresses of the country not only have access to public toilets but have them clean too. Meanwhile, women, the world over, have complained about having to sit down on toilet seats without being aware of the history of germs left behind by the previous users. In India, this problem is only but magnified manifolds due to a lack of proper sensitization to civic responsibilities of the average toilet user.

But it seems the answer to the prayers of innumerable women, who silently dread the possibility of having ‘to go’ and not finding a clean enough place every time they step out of their houses, has arrived. Over a year back on a road trip four friends took to Jaipur, their wives were exasperated with not finding the oasis of a clean toilet despite trying their luck at several fuel stations. One of the friends joked how women cannot have the luxury of urinating while standing like men. This one line became a revolutionary idea in women’s sanitation facilities in India, and Deep Bajaj—one of the friends on the said road trip—promptly founded PeeBuddy in mid-2014. PeeBuddy is India’s first attempt at solving the health issue of contracting UTI (Urinary Tract Infection) every time a woman reluctantly decides to use a toilet of dubious sanitary standards in a public establishment.

It is a commendable fact that it was three men, Deep Bajaj, Mohit Bajaj and Rahul Anand who chose to stray from their well-paying professions and concentrate on innovating a product to provide Indian women with a clean option when threatened by an unclean toilet. PeeBuddy, a paper-coated funnel-like device, can snugly be popped into a handbag, used—the device is designed to fit between the legs without causing discomfort—and disposed easily later. No wonder it will also come handy for pregnant women or those suffering from arthritis from having to squat over an Indian-style toilet.

Such products are not a novelty in Western markets where products of the same specification are sold by brands like “GoGirl”. The good thing is the Indian woman will have the economical option of buying a pack of 10 at Rs. 200 instead of having to dish out 1200 bucks for a pack of GoGirl. Clearly the sale of 20,000 packs in the span of one year shows the pricing work for the start-up outfit that operates out of Delhi. However, it was not easy sailing for the three men in the beginning. The fact that they had a functional and well-designed product at hand with the approval of users and doctors alike, couldn’t keep their brain-child from being turned down by big names. It might sound absurdly parochial in an urban set-up but all of these chains were wary of the idea of a woman standing up to ‘pee’ and the very presence of the word in the product’s name, PeeBuddy.

The troika’s fate turned when E-commerce sites like Amazon.in, Snapdeal and HealthKart agreed to include their product, which was followed by their product’s visibility in retail stores like WHSmith, Modern Trade and NewU. The company received its biggest shout-out from Standard Chartered Mumbai Marathon’s organizers who were keen to distribute the product among their female runners.

Although the product will be used by a selective strata of the financially mobile urban woman, the beginning of a discourse to address these apparently petty issues that have far-reaching effects into the Indian woman’s sanitation and health is always welcome.