Sustainable diaper for the little ones

Mumbai-based Pallavi Utagi, a mother of a five-year-old kid found a solution, which is out of the box to save babies from the common diaper rash.

She found a safe organic cotton langot. She shares about her journey and company 'Super Bottoms' in a freewheeling chat.

Pallavi got this idea when she was using disposable diapers for her baby. She says, "Like any new parent, I was not sure of options apart from the disposable diapers.

I began using them, but my baby developed a diaper rash, which got me worried.

Also, the fact that these disposable diapers are not environment friendly kept worrying me, because every day about five to six diapers were used.

That is when I started looking for alternatives and came across this concept of advanced cloth diapers. We got some from the US as it was popular there.

We tried it on our baby, and we realised that this had a lot of potential in India as Indian parents love cloth and that's when we started Indianising the product and started working to launch a brand in India and that is how 'Super Bottoms' happened."

Being an MBA in marketing, she was always inclined towards launching new products, and brands. She says, "I worked as a band manager with companies like 'Piramal', and I was managing brands such as iPill, iSure and feminine hygiene products.

It was during this time my love for consumer brands happened. When I came across the idea of cloth diapers, I really loved it and thought why not launch a brand with the product in India; I was also able to use my knowledge of marketing in this category."

About the process behind coming up with a perfect product, she explains, "We experimented with a lot of fabrics, we tried different patterns and options.

Our baby was at the perfect diapering age and so we experimented a lot of diapers on him.

We also gave it to our friends and family and then we decided on a unique fabric that is organic, which absorbs whenever the baby pees on it and then we have a water-proof sheet."

Mentioning about her challenges and how she overcame them she says, "There were two main challenges, one was that parents did not know such a concept, and awareness was a bigger challenge.

It was hard for them to believe that cloth diapers could give benefits. We relied heavily on word of mouth, we even gave free trails for a month.

All of that we did for parents to like the product and once the parents like the product, they will recommend them to other mothers as the moms' community is closely knit, and that's how we worked on the awareness part of it.

The second challenge we faced was that it was a new concept, so every parent who tried to use cloth diapers needed a bit of hand holding and education.

We have a helpline managed by mothers, who do video calls and WhatsApp messages on how to use the cloth diapers."

These diapers are fascinatingly reusable, "It is a reusable product; you can wash each diaper, and also use the entire system 300 times," shares Pallavi.

We are present across 100 stores in India at Chennai, Bombay, Bengaluru, Kerala and Hyderabad. We are on e- commerce as well like on our website and popular online stores."