For decades, India’s menstrual hygiene market has been quietly owned by sanitary pads. Not just as a product, but as a behaviour—one built through years of mass advertising, aisle visibility, and generational hand-me-down trust. Today, that dominance is being elbowed—not exactly toppled over—by a new wave of brands selling menstrual cups, biodegradable pads, and period underwear. These brands are all over Instagram Reels, Amazon reviews, and creator-led education.
The real question isn’t if alternatives exist. It’s whether they can change habits in a category where habit is everything.
The familiarity factor
Sanitary pads continue to dominate the period care segment, and the reasons are simple: they are user-friendly and widely available. “Sanitary pads continue to dominate because they are built on familiarity, simplicity and reach,” says Gaurav Bathwal, Co-Founder of Niine. For most women, pads are the first product they encounter or are introduced to at home and in school, creating ‘lasting trust in a category that is still highly personal.’ That trust is reinforced by sheer availability. From kirana stores to pharmacies across urban and rural India, pads are visible, accessible, and priced for mass adoption. With a menstruating population of over 36 crore, accessibility becomes as important as innovation.
Ketan Munoth, Co-Founder of Plush echoes this behavioural inertia. “They’re accustomed to using it every month, so any shift in behaviour is naturally going to take time,” he says. Alternatives, while available, come with friction. Cups and tampons require insertion, which many users are uncomfortable with. Period underwear, although promising, is still price-heavy. They feel bulkier and less disposable.
In a category driven by routine, even small friction points become deal-breakers.
Normalising pads
The dominance of legacy brands wasn’t accidental. It was engineered through decades of mass media and retail muscle.
“Advertising and retail distribution are very important in building trust,” says Munoth. “Since this is a trust-driven category, it takes time and effort to convince users to try a new product.”
Bathwal adds that visibility itself becomes a proxy for quality. “Since hygiene products cannot be tried before purchase, consumers rely on brand visibility as a proxy for quality.” From Whisper and Stayfree’s early education campaigns to Niine’s ‘Let’s Talk Periods,’ and Plush’s ‘Adjust Mat Karo, Plush Use Karo’—ads didn’t just promote products, they normalised menstruation itself. Retail shelves then reinforced that trust. Niine today sits across 2.7 lakh stores, a scale that digital-first brands are still far from replicating.
Akshay D’Souza, Independent Consumer Consultant points out, in India, distribution is not just about scale, it is about access. “Availability of even the basic sanitary pad is not a given in large parts of India,” he says, underlining how foundational retail is to category growth.
Education over exposure
If legacy brands have built trust through television and shelf space, new-age players are doing it through content and community.
“Consumers often first learn about these products through YouTube tutorials, Instagram Reels, gynecologist-led education, and product reviews,” says Deep Bajaj, ReFounder and CEO, Sirona Hygiene. In fact, Sirona has built menstrual cups into a meaningful business, selling over four million units largely without conventional ad spends, relying on quick commerce and creator collaborations over marketplaces.
Ashima Sharma, Research & Development Lead at Pee Safe reinforces this shift toward digital-led discovery. “Menstrual care is increasingly becoming a D2C-led discovery category,” she says. Consumers first encounter products online, get educated about brands, become part of communities, and openly discuss menstrual health before moving to offline purchases. This change marks a fundamental point in how the category is being marketed now. Menstrual care, especially for new formats, is becoming a research-led purchase—not an impulse buy.
Munoth highlights how performance marketing is already delivering tangible results. “AdEx delivers a strong ROI for us, contributing to approximately 70 per cent of our overall revenue,” he shares, adding that their budgets are set to increase by 70–80 per cent this year.
The implication is that digital-first strategies can drive scale, but only within certain consumer cohorts, primarily urban, younger, and more informed audiences.
Behavioural change—the real battlefield
Despite rising awareness, adoption of alternatives remains slow. The barriers are less about availability and more about mindset.
“The challenge is primarily behavioural and educational,” says Bajaj. “Menstrual habits are deeply generational and routine-driven.” Concerns around insertion, discomfort, and simply ‘trying something new’ continue to hold consumers back. And yet, there’s a catch. Once users switch, they rarely go back. “Retention is extremely strong,” Bajaj notes. “Most users don’t go back to pads.” This creates a paradox for challenger brands: high resistance to entry, but high stickiness post-adoption.
However, younger consumers are more open to experimentation, and instead of replacing one product with another, many are building what Bajaj calls a ‘period toolkit.’ They’re mixing cups, pads, and period panties based on need and context.
For ‘greener’ periods
If there’s one narrative fuelling challenger brands, it’s sustainability. Menstrual waste—driven largely by single-use pads and tampons—is coming under sharper scrutiny for its long decomposition cycles and environmental impact. In response, biodegradable pads, menstrual cups, and period underwear are gaining visibility as lower-waste alternatives, especially among younger, more conscious consumers.
But while awareness is rising, adoption at scale remains uneven. The question, then, is whether sustainability can move beyond being a strong narrative to becoming a decisive factor in period care.
“Comfort and convenience continue to remain a bigger priority,” says Munoth. While awareness around plastic use is rising, it still ranks lower than usability in decision-making.
Sharma agrees, framing sustainability as a secondary factor. “In reality, comfort, convenience, and reliability tend to be the primary drivers. But environmental awareness is also becoming a strong secondary motivator, particularly among young urban consumers,” she says. Sanitary napkin brands, meanwhile, are making incremental shifts, from recycled materials to improved packaging. Niine, for instance, has introduced biodegradable disposal bags and is working on affordable biodegradable napkins—but cost remains a barrier.
For D’Souza, sustainability is a long game, especially beyond metropolitan cities. “Erasing the taboo is not as easy. That’s the education game,” he says. In many markets, hygiene awareness itself is still evolving, making sustainability a secondary concern.
The new language of periods
Even the way periods are communicated has undergone a transformation. “We’ve moved from coded, discreet demonstrations to far more open and progressive storytelling,” says Pragati Rana, Head of Originals, Regional Creative Officer - West and Founding Partner, tgthr. From replacing blue liquid with red to including boys in menstrual education narratives, advertising has become more inclusive and realistic. But the challenge is still delicate. “Push too little, and the work feels dated. Push too hard, and you risk alienating audiences,” she notes.
For Abhijat Bharadwaj, Chief Creative Officer, Dentsu Creative Isobar the bigger shift is in what brands choose to talk about. “Modern sanitary care brands are battling something bigger than functional benefits,” he says. Campaigns like Rio Pads’ Raaga, which addressed PCOS experiences, signal a move toward empathy-led storytelling rather than product demos.
For new-age brands, relatability is currency. As Rana puts it, “Gen-Z looks for relatability and they care for that more than the price.”
A tale of two markets
The real complexity of the category lies in how uneven it is.
Rahul Mathew, CCO, McCann India, frames it as a split market. “The audience for period management is extremely disparate. In spite of many initiatives by the government and huge media spends by brands, 40–50 per cent of Indian women still use cloth and other less hygienic ways to manage their period,” he says. “This isn’t an audience that will get converted through digital activations or influencers. Distribution, pricing and most importantly, education will play a big role here.” At the same time, he observes that a very different consumer is emerging at the top-end. “This is where menstrual cups, biodegradable pads, period panties, tampons and night pads come into the picture. The audience for all of this is mostly urban and can be specifically targeted. That’s where influencers and digital come into use.”
His point underscores a critical truth: one strategy cannot unlock this category. He elaborates, “What you provide isn’t just a solution, it’s a way for her to feel that she can manage her periods better.”
Can D2C brands win without mass advertising?
The answer isn’t binary. D2C and digital-first strategies are clearly working, but within limits. They are driving discovery, education, and trial, especially in urban India. They are also creating fairly new sub-categories like menstrual cups and period underwear. But scaling beyond that requires something more fundamental: distribution and affordability.
Toru Jhaveri, Founder & Strategy Lead, The Stuff of Life, who has worked with sanitary napkins and tampons for over 8 years explains, “The key driver for this category will always be discretion and reliability—solutions have to be fail-safe. To the extent that e-commerce/quick commerce reduces any embarrassment at point of sale; it will have a role to play in increasing distribution.”
The future of the category, therefore, may not be about replacing pads, but expanding the ecosystem. Until then, the category sits in transition—not quite disrupted, but no longer uncontested.
