In India, 70% of women don’t find useable public loo when they need one. Forcing them to avoid drinking water or hold their pee in, sometimes even for 12 hours. A violation of a woman’s fundamental human right - the right to pee.

With the launch of the Harpic Loocator app, we aim to hit a combination of SDG 6 – ensuring sanitation for all and SDG 5 – driving gender equality, empowering all women. A simple click on the app can help you find clean useable loos nearby, rate them and even add new loos.

For decades, Indian women have been expected to be at home. Travelling for tourism, work or other reasons was mainly taken up by men rather than women. This cultural dynamics has trickled down to the planning of infrastructure, which has not taken into account the needs of women. Because by nature, men can pee anywhere.

Thus, finding a public loo is a nightmare. So much so that 70% of Indian women don’t find a useable public loo when they need one.

But their nightmare doesn’t end when they find one. 70% of women experience fear and disgust at public loos. Because they are filthy, smelly, sometimes with no running water, electricity or even doors. Unfortunately for women, they have no choice but to use them.

Instead of solving the problem, as a culture, we have forced women to live with it. They hold their pee in by braving excruciating pain, in some cases for up to 12 hours at a stretch. 81% women even don’t drink water, even in the scorching summer heat. Putting their health at risk of problems like UTIs, menstrual hygiene issues, severe dehydration, heat strokes and long-term bladder and kidney issues. Not just that, 75% of women acknowledge avoiding field jobs or extended travel due to lack of public loos, limiting their own opportunities.

At the core, not being able to find a usable loo is a violation of a woman’s very basic, yet very fundamental human right – the right to pee with dignity.

Harpic, India’s biggest toilet cleaning brand, believes that sanitation and more importantly access to clean toilets is a basic and fundamental right. As the primary users of the product, women ironically can’t find clean loos when they need one. Affecting their ability to travel, sign up for field jobs and live without worry.

The brand believes that this leads to a unfair situation where women plan each and every thing on the availability of toilets. Whether it is using the washroom before leaving home, or avoiding the consumption of water leading to long-term health effects or facing immense pain by holding in their pee, 81% women have experience it. In a time where women empowerment is a pressing issue, the lack of useable public toilets becomes an anchor their progress.

As more women join the movement to play larger roles in society as well as the economy, the issue can no longer be overlooked. Hence, the SDG 5 promoting equality for women and SDG 6 promoting clean water and sanitation not only align with the brand’s goals but instead amplify them.

Harpic, India’s No. 1 toilet cleaning brand that believes that access to safe, clean sanitation is a fundamental human right and stands for better hygiene for everyone, had to do something about it.

While Harpic was helping create clean loos at home for consumers, one gap that remained a big pain-point for them, especially women, and that kept coming up in research was - the inaccessibility and the unhygienic state of loos outside. In public places. On delving deeper, we found that there was only one loo for every 20,000 people in India. In case of women, this state was worse.

The brief was to figure out how Harpic can enable better hygiene for women where they needed it the most – outside their homes through a relevant experience.

The objective was to find an easily accessible long-term solution that women can use every day, anywhere and anytime.

Decades ago, women in India were expected to be homemakers while men would go out, work and bring home the bread. But in today’s day, that’s no longer true. Women are breaking the glass ceiling, going to work and exercising their freedom. However, the public toilets have not kept up. While since 2014, 95 million toilets have been made across the country, most of them are in homes. Men go out and pee anywhere – roads, walls, and trees, women don’t have that luxury. They rely on public toilets. And when one is found, it is dirty often lacking doors and running water.

To aid women to exercise their freedom, the Harpic Loocator helps them find clean loos, rate them and even add new toilets to the network. The app, free of cost, can be downloaded most smartphones from the App Store and Google Play, lets women travel without fear.

Harpic launched the Loocator – a crowdsourced mobile app that helps women find easily clean loos nearby, rate these public loos and even add new loos to the network, giving them their most fundamental right - the right to pee.

Using Google API for functionality and familiarity, this app is built with unique, advanced features that use location data and crowdsourcing to help in loo discoverability and shareability. Ratings and review feature gives women the right to choose the cleanest loo in their vicinity while adding feature helps them add new, usable loos – a feature of critical relevance for women trying to find loos in less explored places.

We urged women to #BeFreeToPee in this campaign and turned a mobile phone into a medium that helps women not just locate a loo but locate what they have been missing for decades – their right to pee with dignity.

Women are the key target audience for Harpic which has been providing them with best-in-class hygiene solutions for their loos at home, for years. But when they faced a hygiene challenge outside their homes with 70% of women not being able to find a usable public loo, Harpic had to step in.

Loocator by Harpic helped women find the cleanest loos in their vicinity when they were on-the-go.

In an integrated approach, the Loocator app was launched with #BeFreeToPee campaign using digital films and radio spots targeting women while they are commuting. QR enabled cups were distributed in the busiest markets frequented by women with Satisfying Sips initiative. Additionally, on Women’s Day, the most used public loos near city’s hotspots like metro stations, were cleaned all day long, as a surprise for women to give them a taste of the 5-star cleanliness they can find when they use the app.

We urged women to #BeFreeToPee in a four weeklong campaign that was launched with a film showing the helplessness different women feel when they can’t find a loo.

During peak traffic hours on the most popular routes, RJs pointed out public toilets asking women to take a pee break. In the busiest markets frequented by women, paper cups with QR codes leading to the Loocator app were distributed, encouraging women who avoided drinking water to sip without fear.

On Women’s Day, Harpic went a step forward by partnering with two of India’s biggest loo providers, Sulabh International and PVR Nest’s Pink Toilets, and cleaned the most used public toilets - giving women the priceless experience of a clean public loo.

Many celebrities joined the conversation including Akshay Kumar, Mithali Raj, Sonali Khan to spread the word and help women locate their most fundamental human right - the right to pee.

The campaign sparked conversation with a huge 163 million + reach. Indian celebrities joined in including actors like Akshay Kumar, Chitranga Singh, Soha Ali Khan who spoke about the criticality of such an app. Star of the Indian Women's Cricket team, Mithali Raj and activists like Sonali Khan and Rani Ko-HE-Nur appreciated the app. This led to a whopping 84 million+ in earned media and an impressive number of app downloads of 64,000+ and counting. With them, Indian women joined supporting the Loocator app. The UN’s SDG 5 for equality for women and the SDG 6 to provide sanitation were the key goals that this campaign focuses on the long term. Appreciating Loocator for its relevance and usability, the Founder and Director of World Toilet Organization, Prof Dr. Jack Sim, expressed his intent to extend Loocator to Singapore to help simplify the lives of women there as well.

With the Loocator app being launched in India’s capital as a pilot project, Harpic aims to roll it out to the rest of the country. The brand’s goal is to increase awareness about the app so that women across the country can find clean loos when they need one. The brand also aims to tie-up with NGOs like it has in Delhi NCR to help maintain women’s toilets.

Harpic stands committed to make public toilets an experience without fear and uncertainty.

The goal is to make women feel empowered in their daily lives and go about it without toilet anxiety.

As the Loocator is an app, this section is not relevant.