Aditi Gupta stands out as a remarkable leader in India for her dedication and remarkable work in making people aware of menstruation. She is the brain behind Menstrupedia, a fast-growing startup offering high-social-impact educational materials. With her endowment, Aditi aspires to create a future where menstruation is not shameful but a welcoming change by offering menstruation-related information in an easy yet sensitive way. For over a decade, Aditi has dedicated her career to spreading awareness about menstruation. As the managing partner of Menstrupedia, she is recognized today for leading the world’s most innovative company in teaching and learning about periods.
Menstrupedia: An Innovative Endeavor for Social Impact
Founded in 2012, Menstrupedia is a pioneering menstrual education platform. It is an ideal platform to begin a discussion around growing up and puberty, which has been neglected for a long time. Menstrupedia is well-known for offering socially impactful educational materials in different forms like comic books, workshops, and animated videos. The Menstrupedia Comic, offered by the company, focused on storytelling and sequential art for educating young girls about periods in an informative and fun way. This Menstrupedia Comic is available in 20 languages and is being studied in 23 nations worldwide. Presently, more than 25,500 schools are taking these comic books as part of their curriculum. Aditi has designed and crafted these comics with a careful and sensitive approach that has made this comic widely accepted by 1.5 lakh parents in India.
Further, numerous NGOs, corporations, and government organizations across India and several other countries are using the materials by Menstrupedia.
Aditi’s Journey: From Education to Entrepreneurship
Aditi’s journey into entrepreneurship began with a clear goal to provide the right guidance to people regarding menstruation, hygiene, and puberty and break the myths around them. Her academic career started at the National Institute of Design, Ahmedabad, where she earned her graduation and post-graduation degrees in new media design.
During this time, she met her husband, Tuhin Paul, at the National Institute of Design, where they collaborated on several projects. While working on different projects, they did extensive research on finding out about the present situations of menstrual unawareness across India and its impact on a girl’s life. Surprisingly, they found a severe lack of awareness about menstruation. They even found the most educated people unaware about the issue, and many of them still believed and followed the year-old menstrual myths.
The lack of awareness among people and education about menstruation pushed her, and she did more research on this topic for one year. She gathered a lot of knowledge from doctors and girls, which gave her the idea to begin a comic book with three other inspiring girls and a doctor as the main characters. Besides, based on her own early-age experience, Aditi kept the foundation of Menstrupedia. She developed great tools for educating girls and schools through storytelling and sequential art for educating young girls about periods in a society where the subject is a major taboo.
Early Life and Formative Years
Aditi was born in Garhwa in Jharkhand, India, and spent her formative years there. When she was just 12 years old, Aditi herself started menstruating, but she learned about menstruation when she was 15 years old. This early age experience set the stage for her future as a social innovator.
Those days, Aditi even had to follow the old traditions, like not entering a place of worship or sitting on other people’s beds and washing clothes separately. What’s worse, she was not allowed to buy and use sanitary napkins available in the market. She bought her sanitary napkins for the first time when she turned 15. This early-age incident began laying the foundation for her lifelong work in spreading awareness about menstruation, and she started her venture later as Menstrupedia.
Key Achievements and Milestones
Boasting over sixteen years of experience, Adit has achieved numerous milestones that highlight her leadership and innovation:
- She was named Forbes India 30 under 30 in 2014 for her remarkable contributions towards breaking the taboo around menstruation.
- Aditi was recognized as one of the “Most Influential Women” by BW Business World Magazine.
- Apart from being a reputed social entrepreneur and co-founder of Menstrupedia, Aditi is also an International Visitor Leadership Program (IVLP) alumnus.
Additionally, she is a World Economic Forum Global Shaper, a TED speaker, and a UN Goalkeeper and was listed in the BBC 100 Women. Her work has been featured in The Wall Street Journal, Reuters, CNBC, and BBC.
Leadership Lessons
As Aditi continues to lead Menstrupedia into the future, her unwavering commitment to ending period-related stigmas, compassionate care, and strategic growth remains at the core of her leadership. Her overall story is a testament to the power of determination and resilience in breaking the barriers and making people aware. Some of the key lessons aspiring entrepreneurs can learn from her journey are
- Always approach obstacles with creativity and focus on developing solutions that tackle the real needs of people and create a difference.
- While working for your growth, consider how your work can contribute to the welfare of society and well-being. Work for the causes that come with your values.
- Create resilience and determination in your journey to ensure your success. When you overcome the challenges and focus on your objective, you ensure your success.