3 Engineers Built Period Panties Used by 600K Indian Women

A government school teacher in Assam loved her job but disappeared for five days every month. Her brother Kiriti Acharjee, working as an engineer in Bengaluru, finally asked why.

What she told him changed everything. She had nowhere at school to change pads and nothing that could last through eight-hour teaching days. Her choice felt simple: stay home or risk public embarrassment.

Kiriti called two childhood friends. Satyajit Chakraborty's sister had schizophrenia and sometimes forgot she was menstruating, leaving their family in constant worry. Sourav Chakrabarty's wife bled so heavily that changing pads every few hours felt unbearable.

The three engineers realized their sisters, wives, colleagues, and millions of Indian women faced the same impossible choice every month. In January 2020, they pooled 1.5 million rupees and founded HealthFab in Bengaluru.

Their mission sounded simple: create leak-proof, reusable period underwear that women could wear for 12 hours without worry. Making it work took 60 attempts.

Sourav, who had research experience, discovered that absorbency could be engineered into cotton fabric. They rejected the polyester base used in American products, searching instead for materials that felt right for Indian women in Indian climates.

The product they built, called GoPadFree, uses specialized cotton layers that absorb heavily while staying dry against the skin. Women can wear them all day, wash them, and reuse them for years.

Why This Inspires

These three men didn't just see a business opportunity. They saw their sisters and partners struggling with a basic bodily function and refused to accept it as normal.

They invested their savings during a pandemic to solve a problem they would never personally experience. That kind of empathy drives real change.

Today, 600,000 women across India wear their product. Teachers stay in classrooms. Working women skip fewer days. Families worry less. The math is simple: fewer leaks, fewer rashes, fewer impossible choices.

HealthFab didn't invent period underwear, but they made it accessible to Indian women who needed it most. Sometimes progress looks like three engineers from small Assam towns refusing to accept that their loved ones should suffer in silence.