The best products — and the best launches built with the Product Launch Formula — start with a real problem that real people have. Sometimes it’s a problem nobody wants to talk about. Arunachalam Muruganantham chose one of those, and paid for it with years of ridicule.
Chapter 1Muruganantham’s childhood: a lost father and a working mother
Arunachalam Muruganantham was born on 12 October 1961 in Coimbatore, in the Indian state of Tamil Nadu. His father died in a road accident. His mother worked as a farm laborer to pay for his schooling.
At 14 he dropped out. He worked as a food supplier, a machine-tool operator, a yam-selling agent, a farm laborer and a welder. He had no degree and no training as an engineer — just hands that knew how to build things.
Chapter 2The discovery that changed Muruganantham’s life
In 1998 he married Shanthi. Soon after, he noticed she was hiding something: during her period she used rags and old newspaper, because sanitary pads were too expensive for the household budget.
He was shocked. He looked into it and found that the raw materials for a pad cost about ₹10 — but the finished product sold for about 40 times that. Millions of women in India couldn’t afford them.
He decided to make an affordable pad himself.
Chapter 3Muruganantham’s experiments and the ridicule
His first pads were made of cotton. His wife and sisters rejected them. He needed testers, and in a society where menstruation was rarely spoken of, he could barely find any.
So he tested them on himself — wearing a bladder filled with animal blood to simulate a period.
A welder from Coimbatore walking around with a bladder of animal blood, trying to understand a woman’s problem. His community thought he had lost his mind.
He was ridiculed and ostracized by his community and by his family because of the subject he was working on. It took him about two years just to discover what commercial pads were made of: cellulose fibre from pine bark wood pulp.
Chapter 4Muruganantham’s ₹65,000 machine
Imported machines for making pads cost about ₹35 million (around US$360,000). Muruganantham built his own machine that costs about ₹65,000 (around US$670) — a fraction of the price, designed to put pad-making within reach of small local producers.
After a 2006 visit to the Indian Institute of Technology Madras, his invention received a National Innovation Foundation award for grassroots technological innovation. He founded a company to sell the machines. His machines have been installed in 23 of India’s 28 states.
In 2014 Time named him one of the 100 most influential people in the world. In 2016 he received the Padma Shri, one of India’s highest civilian honors. In 2018 Bollywood told his story in the film Pad Man.
What Muruganantham’s story teaches about launching a product
Muruganantham lesson 1: start with the problem, not the product
He didn’t set out to be an inventor. He saw his wife’s problem and refused to look away. The strongest launches start the same way: by understanding a painful, specific problem. Jeff Walker’s Product Launch Formula begins with listening to your market — surveys, questions, conversations — before you build anything.
Muruganantham lesson 2: test with real users, early
Cotton pads were rejected. That feedback was painful but essential. A Seed Launch gives you the same early feedback for a course or program: a small group of real buyers tells you what works before you invest in the big version.
Muruganantham lesson 3: price for the people you serve
His whole mission was affordability. When you design an offer, think honestly about who it’s for and what they can afford — and design the offer to fit.
Muruganantham lesson 4: ridicule is temporary; results are not
The people who mocked him are forgotten. The machines remain. If friends or family don’t understand your online business, let the results speak — in time.
The years Muruganantham could have quit
He lost the respect of his community and the support of people close to him, and spent years on experiments that failed. He kept going until the problem was solved.
Arunachalam Muruganantham has no connection to Jeff Walker, Product Launch Formula or PLF Reviews; we tell his documented story for its lesson. If there’s a real problem you know how to solve, take a first step: register for the free Launch Masterclass.
References: where this story is documented
Every fact in this story was checked against the sources below. Quotes are short and attributed; dates and figures follow these references.
Marciano reviews Jeff Walker's public training, the book Launch and the official program pages, and keeps these guides updated. PLF Reviews is an independent affiliate site — not Jeff Walker or Internet Alchemy, Inc. How we review · Affiliate disclosure
Last updated October 11, 2026
