Twenty-eight-year-old Peerzada Aaqib Nazar started his organic and eco-friendly napkins unit to promote safety and menstrual hygiene among women in the Kashmir Valley. After completing his BTech from Chandigarh in 2016, Aaqib joined a multinational corporation (MNC) in Dubai as a civil engineer. In April 2019, he returned to Kashmir and invested Rs 30 lakh in a project to sell organic sanitary napkins to women in the Valley.
“On my return to Kashmir I entered into a casual discussion with a gynecologist on board a Dubai-India flight, I was surprised to know that companies were using plastics and toxic chemicals in the sanitary napkins, which is one of the biggest reasons for cervical and ovarian cancer in Kashmir.
Therefore, I decided to start importing eco-friendly organic pads from different countries and later I started selling them under the brand name Sehha (Arabic for health). These napkins are 100 percent cotton and organic,” Aaqib tells HerStory. Plastic, he says, is a cheap raw material and available in abundance, whereas organic raw material is expensive and difficult to procure. Seha is available in departmental stories and medical stores across the Valley. He sells them online through the website www.sehaorganics.com.
