Four students from St Paul’s University rose to international fame after they won the Hult Prize Trophy in New York in September 2022.
Keylie Muthoni, Brian Ndung’u, Lennox Omondi and Shiltone Ogutu won the grand prize due to their innovation in making biodegradable banana sanitary pads under Eco-Bana Limted.
Six months after winning the prize, the students begged family members, relatives and community members to stop asking for money as they were broke.
“Everybody thinks we have the money. The other day my grandmother asked when I was starting to build her a new house.
“I cannot tell people that I am broke because no one believes me,” Muthoni remarked during an interview with Weekly Review.
The group decried that they had been living under intense pressure due to expectations from society since winning the money.
They revealed that they receive incessant calls from people begging money or seeking ways to exploit them.
On why they are broke despite winning such a hefty sum, Muthoni explained, “The money comes in batches and we have to do a detailed proposal for each batch.”
She further explained that misusing the grant through frivolous spending would be detrimental to their plan of ending period poverty.
“There is a lot of documentation involved and we have to account for every coin.
“If we misuse the money on anything other than the project, we will be cut off completely,” she explains why there are stringent spending measures.
The students are working hard and believe that by the end of 2023, they will have started mass-producing biodegradable sanitary pads.
“Banana pith has a high absorption rate and is biodegradable, which is why we settled on it as a solution.
“Our business model is a social enterprise; we aim to generate profits while creating social and environmental impact, which could mean selling our product directly to non-governmental organisations that align with our mission,” the team revealed of their production and marketing strategy.
The team has already acquired a piece of land in Kisii County for planting the banana stalks as well as recruiting 25 employees to help with the production.
They plan is to import high-tech manufacturing machinery worth Ksh10 million which will produce 200 pads per minute.
