A condom that men will crave to wear

Bill Gates has thrown a $100,000 global challenge: Go design a condom men will crave to wear. Indian designers are thinking bi-coloured, but are we really pleased?

It’s a story not many in India would have heard. As these things go, it involved an Indian — an unlikely one. It was the mid-80s. Dr Alla Venkata Krishna Reddy, a trained surgeon, was researching the

AIDS virus when he hit upon a simple, yet brilliant idea to design a condom that men would want to wear, not because it was a necessary evil, but because it would, in very real terms, up their pleasure. If men wore condoms out of choice, the spread of the virus could be curtailed, he reasoned.

His design, sold as the Pleasure Plus condom, was introduced in the early 1990s in the United States, and began to fly off the shelves. Unlike the straight shaft design (which continues to prevail to this day), Pleasure Plus had an asymmetrical shape. When in use, a dab of latex on the inside of the condom rubbed against the male organ hitting the right spot, as it were. Within a year, however, Reddy’s company went bankrupt and he lost his patent. Not one to take things lying down, he designed another asymmetrical condom, this one shaped like a nautilus shell, after setting up a manufacturing unit in Chennai in the mid-90s. Called the InSpiral, it hit the market in 1999. It was widely considered to be the best; health portal Livestrong.com listed it as one of the Top 10 Best Condoms, Reddy himself called it the “best condom I’ve created”. In 2010, Reddy’s Chennai-based firm, MedTech Products Ltd shut shop due to “power and labour-related issues” according to a former executive who didn’t wish to be named. Reddy, now 72, lives a retired life in Plainsboro, New Jersey.

Pleasure, says the Gates
That’s unfortunate, because earlier this month, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation put up $100,000 (Rs 54.3 lakh) for anyone who can come up with a game-changing design for a sheath that would ‘enhance pleasure in order to improve uptake and regular use’, echoing Reddy’s decades-old reasoning.

The competition announced on the Foundation’s Grand Exploration Challenges website, states the problem that faces the worldwide condom industry expected to hit $6 billion in 2015 according to Global Industry Analysts Inc — “Condoms have been in use for about 400 years, yet they have undergone very little technological improvement in the past 50 years (…) Material science and our understanding of neurobiology have undergone revolutionary transformation in the last decade, yet that knowledge has not been applied to improve the product attributes of one of the most ubiquitous and potentially underutilised products on earth.”

Is India talking pleasure?
A glance at the Indian condom industry, estimated at Rs 1,100 crore may lead you to think otherwise. Pleasure is part of the conversation of all condom manufacturers. For instance, KamaSutra, manufactured by JK Ansell (an equal joint venture between Raymond Group and Ansell International of Australia) sells 14 condom packs, including LongLast, Wet n’ Wild, Warm Intimacy, Butterscotch, Vanilla and Strawberry flavoured, besides Dotted and Ribbed condoms. For the international market, Ansell Limited sells Fun Bumps (with “raised studs to stimulate the woman”), Turbo (“specially lubricated inside and out for the ultimate sexual experience”), 3Sum 3-in1 condom (“Ribbed and studded texture”), among others.

Durex, another top selling private brand owned by Reckitt Bensicker, has eight types of condom packs for the Indian market, which includes three fruit-flavoured types. The tagline of Kohinoor is ‘Ignite the passion.’ These companies also make Ultra-thin condoms using polyurethane and polyisoprene instead of latex, to offer a ‘better’ experience. In a slight twist to the tale, KamaSutra’s latest entrants have been marketed as fun makers, rather than passion igniters. The two variants — big head and bi-coloured — are being sold through a tie up with MTV that has traditionally stood as a youth icon.

Called MTV Hardwear by KamaSutra, the condom packs of three and eight hit 25 cities last week. A glow in the dark variant is in the pipeline. According to Sandeep Dahiya, business head of Consumer Products at Viacom18, their decision to tweak the conversation was based on research that the Indian youth is having more sex and is experimental.

And so, tongue-in-cheek graphics adorn the pack. “The shape of the product has stayed the same, but the variants are changing. We didn’t want to make another dotted or ribbed product. We wanted to introduce surprise and fun, both in the product and packaging,” said Dahiya.

Who’s buying it?
Yet, industry experts confirm that all condoms are in effect variants, and face a brutal market where consumers either choose to not use condoms or, fail to differentiate between brands and varieties of a single brand. Ignorance aside, consumers depend on what the retailer puts on the counter for them to buy, not least out of shyness. Even among regular users — married and/ or monogamous — condoms aren’t used for every individual act. This begs the question, who is buying condoms for pleasure?

Unlike the United States, clinical trials with consumers are not mandatory in India and few manufacturers ask control groups to try their product before they sell them in the market. HLL Lifecare Ltd, a public-private enterprise, which owns the lion share of the Indian condom industry since it entered the market in 1969 with Nirodh, recently took the help of gynaecologists to conduct a trial for their new female condoms, Velvet, Rani and Ladies Special. Dr KRS Krishnan, director (Technical and Operations) admitted that the process wasn’t easy. Multi-process quality control tests conducted by manufacturers check for holes, elasticity, pressure and ageing, not pleasure. The Drug Controller General of India, which gives licences to companies to set up manufacturing units doesn’t ask that the condom enhance experience, nor do the regulations laid down by the World Health Organisation that list condoms as a Schedule ‘R’ drug.

The government — the largest buyer of condoms in the country — is concerned with distributing condoms in subsidy for contraception and as a prophylactic measure. MedTech’s former executive pointed out that InSpiral was sold in Tamil Nadu for a short duration in 2000. But, given its price point (Rs 18 for a pack of three, while other packets were selling for as low as Rs 6), and focus on pleasure enhancement, it didn’t receive any governmental support and the condom was soon pulled off the market.

“At the moment, most of the condoms around the world are the same. It’s a near saturated technology. Adding a dot or a stripe may enhance the pleasure perception, and while that is an important component, the most significant aspect of a condom is that it should protect from pregnancy, STDs, and mustn’t slip off or break,” said Krishnan.

Satisfying the user
In 2012, a final year Applied Arts student of the Government Fine Arts College in Thiruvananthapuram, Sebin Thomas almost did a Reddy on the condom market. Aware that men are often daunted by the prospect of approaching a retailer for a packet of condoms, he conceived of a free-size condom that would save buyers uncomfortable questions about size and fit. “By making small changes to the composition of the material, the elasticity of the condom can be changed,” he said over the phone from Bengaluru, where he now works for an advertising agency. Thomas wasn’t equipped with the technical know-how to manufacture his prototype, and it remained in the realm of conceptual design.

According to Dr M Ayappan, chairman and managing director of HLL Lifecare Ltd, the conversation surrounding condoms has changed since he first introduced their flagship brand Moods in the early 90s. “Back then, we needed to address the embarrassment factor. So our slogan was ‘Ask for Moods by name’. Since condoms were also perceived as inhibiting pleasure, we began to carefully position the brand as a pleasureenhancing device. Ultimately, it’s in the mind of the customer. They should feel that the condom will give them happiness.”

Will the new Dr Reddy please stand up?