Startups tackle women’s lavatory woes

NEW DELHI: With her bladder it to burst on a recent ride with an allfemale motorbike club, Vidhi Malla chugged on her 350cc “Thunderbird” into a fancy highway eatery near New Delhi and rushed to the toilet.

But to her disgust, if not to her surprise, the facilities stank and the seat was splattered with urine, forcing the 34-year-old to get back on her bike and wait till she got home.

Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi will trumpet progress in improving access to toilets at a Delhi convention starting this weekend − but as Malla’s experience shows, there is still a long way to go.

Some help is at hand from local startups providing ways to avoid coming into contact with or clean up ilthy toilet seats, which doctors warn pose a health risk to many women.

“Toilets are a huge issue. Once I caught an infection from using a loo in a big hotel,” Malla, a public relations consultant, said.

Malla’s friends in her bike gang recounted their own horror stories − from bins overlowing with used toilet paper to wiping the seat with the edge of their dresses.

Using a dirty toilet, not drinking enough water or holding urine for a long time puts women at a greater risk of urinary tract infections, a painful complaint that half of women report having had at least once.

Indian toilets “are a breeding ground for infections,” gynaecologist Anshu Jindal said.

New businesses tackling the problem are tapping into a feminine hygiene sector forecast by Euromonitor to grow to $522 million by 2020 from $340 million now as India’s middle class swells.

India’s irst female urination device, the Peebuddy, is a simple candy-green cardboard funnel laminated with waterresistant coating allowing women to keep their distance from loo seats.

Peesafe meanwhile, dispensed from a purple spray can, is a seat sanitiser.

“We have sold 750,000 units in the last 18 months and we are now present in 10 other countries,” said Vikas Bagaria, founder of Peesafe.

Innovations like these have helped to “liberate” women like Malla, she says, meaning they don’t have to think twice before hitting the road.

Such issues are set to igure highly at the Mahatma Gandhi International Sanitation Convention, running from Saturday to Tuesday.

The event, coinciding with Gandhi’s 150th birthday, is hosted by Modi with UN chief Antonio Guterres in attendance alongside ministers and experts.