Abstract

On June 22, 2017, Ashutosh Joshi (Ashutosh) and his wife, Sharada, launched goodfeel, a specialized undergarment for women that would allow them to relieve themselves in a standing position. They got the idea for this product when their daughter was diagnosed with urinary tract infection (UTI), which they felt was the result of the ill-maintained toilets at school. Many girls and women in India were left susceptible to UTI as there were an inadequate number of public toilets available and the condition of those that were there was pathetic. This led to many women avoiding the toilets, which put them at a health risk. Moreover, due to age or some health conditions, some women were not able to sit down on toilets to relieve themselves. Ashutosh and his wife wanted to take care of this problem and after multiple iterations, their seventeenth prototype was commercialized under the brand name ‘goodfeel’. The product underwent rigorous trials in which more than 4,000 women participated before it was commercialized. While their innovative product attracted accolades from the industry, Ashutosh and Sharada also faced certain challenges. According to Ashutosh, the raw materials used for manufacturing the product were costly. The cost along with having to sell an unconventional and intimate feminine product presented Ashutosh with a number of challenges. What can Ashutosh do to communicate the benefits of the product in a society where women find the act of relieving themselves outside the peripheries of their own house a daunting task? How can the target audience be convinced to adopt the product in a culture where it is considered taboo for a woman to even ask for a public toilet?

Learning Objectives

The case is structured to achieve the following Learning Objectives:

• To understand the issues and challenges involved in developing a new unconventional product.
• To understand the target market and target consumers in selling the product.
• To understand the traits of a social entrepreneur.
• To understand the marketing strategies for selling the product.
• To understand the issues and challenges faced by a social entrepreneur in selling a product.

Keywords

Consumer Behavior; New Product Development; Prototyping; Commercialization; Product adoption and diffusion; Buying behaviour; Socio-cultural influences; Marketing Research; Consumer research; Demassification; Positioning; Market segmentation; Entrepreneurship; Social entrepreneurship; Business model