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Dynavend to launch condom vending machines on commercial basis

Dynavend Machines, a Pune, Maharashtra-based company, has launched condom vending machines on a commercial basis.

Dynavend would install 25 such machines at vantage points in Pune. Consumers have to insert two one rupee coins into the machine, then press a button, and out pops out the condom.

The condom vending machines will operate free-of-cost for two months. Later, condoms would be sold under different packaged schemes, Dynavend's managing director D R Deshpande said.

Dynavend has already sold around 500 CVMs to different non-government organisations and other bodies working in the field of family planning and AIDS prevention. This is the first time that it is commercially selling the CVMs.

Launched under the brand name Karishma, the CVMs have been named as Karishma RDK, as a tribute to the late social reformer Raghunath Dhondo Karve, who had dedicated his life to teaching and propogating the importance of family planning and sex education in Pune in the earlier part of this century, Deshpande stated.

The CVMs were first introduced in Bombay through the Family Planning Association of India in 1994. Feedback from users was used to improve the machine's operation.

The CVM is the third coin-operated machine to be used in India after telephones and weighing machines, he claimed.

Deshpande informed that he undertook commercial production recently after his company received financial assistance of Rs 10 million from USAID when they visited an exhibition in Delhi and were impressed with the CVMs there.

Priced between Rs 7,500 and Rs 12,500, the CVMs could provide a commission of Rs 48 per day to one who installs them and thus its cost could be recovered in about a year's time.

He said some of the condom manufacturers now want to tie up with Dynavend so that they could sell them along with their brands of condoms.

Deshpande said Dynavend would instal 25 such machines in Pune, around 100 in Bombay and 25 in other cities and towns in western Maharashtra by the end of 1999.

While another electrically operated machine for selling the premium brands of condoms would soon hit the market, the company is also planning to introduce another vending machine for selling sanitary napkins in a couple of months, Deshpande said.

The company aims to sell around 3,000 such machines over the next three years, he added.

UNI

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