When Nandini Kanthi first got her period, she thought that maybe she was dying. Culturally, menstruating wasn’t something that was discussed freely – leaving Kanthi confused and unprepared for an occurrence that is natural and healthy.
“Growing up, I had certain, interesting experiences with my menstrual health or period, related to cultural stigma,” Kanthi said. “A lot of it was like when you’re on your period, you can’t go to the temple or you can’t do this thing or that thing. It was a narrative that was perpetuated of ‘periods are gross’ or, ‘a person on their period is dirty.’”
Sensible, an emerging Triangle startup revolving around a wearable sticker that reads menstrual blood and gives menstruators information about their own bodies, was born out of Kanthi’s and countless other young girls’ experiences.
“Unfortunately, we’re so behind in terms of how educated young girls are about the experience,” Kanthi said. “About what actually goes on inside, beyond just, ‘Oh, you get your period and it should happen every 28 days,’ beyond that, what exactly do we understand? And unfortunately it’s not a lot.”
How Sensible works
The Sensible product is a small, flat disposable sticker that is meant to be attached to a pad. The sticker has a sensing module that collects menstrual blood and then sends insights from the sensor to a companion app.
“Menstrual blood has 385 proteins you can’t find anywhere else in the blood,” Kanthi said. “So actually, your menstrual blood is quite different from other fluids you can find, which means that there is a huge gap in the knowledge that we understand about a person’s body.”
Befitting that complexity, what originally began as a simple diagnostic test for endometriosis bloomed into something much more ambitious: an all-in-one hub of information about an individual’s menstrual health. Sensible reads for inflammation markers, iron levels, and hemoglobin levels, all of which can provide valuable information about health outcomes for menstruators. For example, if someone has severe period cramps, trends in inflammation markers can help to predict when cramps might occur next and how severe they may be.
Kanthi described Sensible as a sort of continuous health tracking device, similar to Oura rings or Apple watches. Where period tracking apps rely on user input, Sensible uses quantitative data to provide information to its users.
Kanthi said that the team is projected to complete their minimum viable product phase by September, and plans to begin selling its product online in early 2027. The team aims to make Sensible in its current form available for purchase as a subscription-style product priced at $19 per month and paired with the Sensible mobile app wherein users can access their information.
Early support and the path ahead
The team behind Sensible—made up of CEO Nandini Kanthi, CFO Juliet Wu, CTO Jingyao Deng and COO Vrutika Soneji—has found great support in the Research Triangle startup community and beyond, having raised more than $155,000 in pitch competition winnings from organizations like Harvard Business Women’s Health and UNC’s Innovate Carolina.
Kanthi specifically credits the team at Launch Chapel Hill, a business accelerator with a focus on the UNC-Chapel Hill ecosystem, for opening doors and supporting Sensible from its early stages.
In the future, Sensible aims to expand its product line, specifically to develop a sensor that would work with those who use menstrual cups or tampons. Additionally, the startup intends to create partnerships in the healthcare industry to distribute the sensors in OB-GYN clinics and pharmacies.
As the Sensible team prepares to launch early next year, it is seeking volunteers to participate in its study to test the product and collect a larger pool of data. Additionally, the team is recruiting for its software development team to work on the Sensible app and user experience.
QUICK BITS
Startup: Sensible
Co-Founders: Nandini Kanthi (CEO), Jingyao Deng (CTO), Juliet Wu (CFO), Vrutika Soneji (COO),
Ishita Bafna; core team also includes Vaishnavi Kode (VP of Growth)
Founded: 2025
Team size: 13
Location: Chapel Hill
Website: sensiblepad.com
Funding: Raising pre-seed
Ultimately, the startup is positioning itself as a new player in the long-neglected landscape of women’s health that aims to patch gaps in knowledge about how the female body works—something that might even eventually help diagnose and treat painful yet under-researched conditions like endometriosis and PCOS.
“[Sensible] gives women more information about their bodies to help them understand something—their periods—that’s felt so unpredictable for the longest time, and to finally make them a predictable experience,” Kanthi said.
