Quotes from Arunachalam Muruganantham

I'm ecstatic to be known as pad man, as it makes a difference to women's lives.

My wife was gone, all other girls failed to cooperate, so I decided to wear a pouch of animal blood myself and test out my pads by wearing them myself. The discomfort I felt for those five days cannot be explained in words; I bow to every woman on earth for going through this every month.

When I speak a serious subject in an informal and humorous way, it has bigger impact. So much so, when BBC made a small documentary, they first thought of having a voiceover for me. The producer liked my English so much, he said they were retaining my original voice.

Imagine: I got patent rights to the only machine in the world to make low-cost sanitary napkins - a hot-cake product. Anyone with an MBA would immediately accumulate the maximum money. But I did not want to. Why? Because from childhood, I know no human being died because of poverty - everything happens because of ignorance.

My life is a brave one. I didn't put any restrictions.

Social entrepreneurship is like a butterfly, sucking honey from a flower, but the flower won't die. They're helping the flower to make pollination.

I have not hung a single award on my walls, including the Padma Shri.

If you chase a girl, the girl won't like you. Do your job simply, the girl will chase you.

I don't have any plans to make money for myself. All I wish to do is empower rural women in our country.

I didn't take the money route because I saw my parents struggle for survival.

Even if I can take sanitary napkins to 10% of the poor women in India, it will be big achievement.

I converted a problem into an opportunity.

Being the son of a handloom weaver, I have knowledge of cotton and some other material.

My vision is to make India into a 100% sanitary-pad-using country. Menstruation is no more a taboo.

The taboo regarding menstruation exists across the world, even among the educated.

To break the age-old taboos and to see girls and women use pads was a difficult task.

There were offers from a few Bollywood filmmakers, but I was sceptical as to whether those films will do justice to my vision or even my life. I was also apprehensive because what if I sign an agreement and give the rights to some filmmaker, and he shelves the project?

A lot of people making a lot of money, billion, billions of dollars accumulating. Why are they coming for, finally, for philanthropy? Why the need for accumulating money, then doing philanthropy? What if one decided to start philanthropy from the day one?

Wherever I went and spoke about menstrual hygiene, I was beaten up by people. I used to cover my cheeks with both my hands whenever I went to speak on the subject, so how could I ever imagine that someone would make a film on such a topic?

I have accumulated no money but I accumulate a lot of happiness. If you get rich, you have an apartment with an extra bedroom - and then you die.

My nature is such that even if I failed 9,999 times, I'll attempt for the 10,000th time again.

I always say, 'Be near science and technology, and you will never fail.'

The idea came from my wife, since in our village, women cannot afford to buy sanitary pads. When I asked my wife, she told me we would have to cut down half of our milk budget to buy sanitary pads. Moreover, while raw materials for sanitary pads cost 10 paise, the end product was sold for 40 times that price. So, I decided to create it on my own.

India and other developing nations need non-farm sector activity. So what we are doing, we are giving small microbusiness to the rural women, especially the farmers' wives.