In March 2012, then President Pratibha Patil presented the Sixth National Grassroots Innovation Awards to 47 innovators of India. Among the top three honorees was Mr Gurmail Singh Dhonsi of Ganganagar, Rajasthan, winner of the National First Award.
Rapid Compost Aerator and Tractor Mounted Tree Pruner, innovations that fetched him the national recognition, are prime examples of what drives Dhonsi. The compost aerator, in fact, was a follow up of the tree pruner. It was a remark by Surender Kumar Jakhad of Maujgarh, a Punjab village bordering Rajasthan, that set him thinking. Says Dhonsi, “Jakhad said why don’t I make a machine for him that could use all the leaves and fruits wasted in pruning?” That was the lead for Dhonsi to start drawing for his next invention.
It was Jakhad, again, who inspired Dhonsi to develop his award winning tree pruner. A tractor mounted device, the pruner draws upon the tractor’s hydraulic system to power its motor and operate the blades. The beauty of the simple device is that it can be mounted on any tractor of 40 hp and above. It can prune trees of up to 20 ft height; in about one hour it can prune and dress 200 trees consuming just 3.5 litres of fuel. The tree pruner is a cost, time and fuel-efficient innovation that can revolutionise farm production in orchards and horticulture gardens. NIF has filed a patent for the pruner which is priced at US$ 8550.
This 53-year-old inveterate innovator is not ready to hang up his boots yet. He is currently in the process of perfecting a ridge-maker. There are other machines on his agenda—all of them inspired by the grassroots problems of farmers and aimed at easing their workload. He wishes to produce these on a large scale for economy of scale benefits and hopes for subsidies on raw material for himself and for farmers on finished goods. “If farmers get subsidy, it will be good,” he says. Given Dhonsi’s sincere pursuits, more inventions are sure to come out of his ‘workshop’.
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With a Human Heart
The field of biomedical engineering is just coming into its own in India. CGN Research Labs is unique in its devotion to the promotion of cutting-edge research, technology and innovation in a field that would add lustre to India's growth story. Dr C Jairaj Kumar, Director, R&D, and Chief Medical Officer, CGN Research Labs, is confident of the country increasing its presence in the field: "Majority of the medical equipments that we use are currently imported or non-Indian innovations. We do not have established Indian medical device innovations that rule international market. But this field offers huge potential with increasing promotional programmes aimed at encouraging Indian innovations. We are sure several Indian companies shall make their mark in medical device industry in the near future." The researcher firmly believes that "established mid-sized medical device companies in India must focus on path breaking innovations rather than making small technical improvements to their existing device." This is the way for India to make its mark as an innovator of medical equipment on the global firmament.
CGN Research Labs was founded in 2010 by Dr Jairaj Kumar, Joint Managing Director of the company and Mr C Satish Kumar, Chairman and Managing Director, with two inventions-the first was a device that uses the revolutionary chaos theory to diagnose diabetic neuropathy and the second a device called Thermo Scan, that was developed using a patented nanoparticle focal plane array.
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A Green Extension
It is a bit incongruous to find a game application on a website which is purported to have unleashed a quiet revolution in India’s countryside. But right below the neatly stacked vignettes of farming activities is the link to the game which takes you to Facebook. You’re inclined to dismiss it as a takeoff on Farmville, another app that has 21 million Facebook community members hooked. But, Wonder Village, with 22,000 registered uset, does what it says—bridge the real and virtual, with the aim to raise social awareness and help raise funds for the development sector. There are many such technological marvels in store as you trawl the website to understand what exactly Digital Green innovates.
Digital Green was established in 2006 in Bangalore by Rikin Gandhi, a young computer science graduate from Carnegie Mellon University and masters in aeronautical and astronautical engineering from Massachusetts Institute of Technology. A pilot with ambitions to become an astronaut, Gandhi changed course midstream. In fact, it was to help start a biodiesel venture on the wastelands of Maharashtra that had brought Gandhi to India. No one could have foreseen that the boy born and raised in the US would decide to soon ‘reverse migrate’ to India and work in the rural countryside.
Today, Digital Green’s ‘agriculture extension innovation’ has wrought beneficial changes in the lives of 109,911 farmers of 1,541 villages belonging to six states of India. Not surprisingly then, the International Fertiliser Association (IFA) has recognised Gandhi for the 2012 IFA Norman Borlaug Award. In 2010, Gandhi also featured in Technology Review’s Annual List of 35 Innovators under 35 years of age. The same year, he was one of the eight visionaries to feature in The Fortune Global Forum Visionaries List.
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Nurturing Innovation
Genome Valley is India's first biotechnology cluster and home to some of the
most prestigious research and development (R&D) institutions. It provides world-class
infrastructure to more than 100 biotechnology companies for conducting cutting-edge
research in life sciences, training their scientists, scientific collaboration
and manufacturing activities. In the heart of this cluster, the IKP Knowledge
Park sits on a sprawling 200-acre campus. Launched in 1999 by ICICI Bank in
partnership with the government of Andhra Pradesh, the park fosters innovation
in life sciences. The park contains five facilities that it calls innovation
corridors. The first of these corridors holds 10 cavernous laboratories.
The park's mission is to "create a world class centre for leading-edge business-driven
research in India," says Deepanwita Chattopadhyay, its managing director and
CEO. The IKP Knowledge Park has some of the most distinguished scientist entrepreneurs
on its board who have made it their mission to deepen India's research achievements.
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Asking the right questions!
Giri Balasubramaniam, founded Greycaps India Pvt Ltd in Bengaluru in 1999.
It is now the country's second largest quiz company.
"Greycaps began as the translation of a passion. When we were quizzing in our
college days in the late eighties and early nineties we found that quizzing
needed the infusion of fresh blood and ideas. For the audience, quizzing was
also very difficult. There were two kinds of attendees—those who had read up,
and those who did not even understand the questions, leave alone know the answers.
People found quizzes for the brainy, not for entertainment. Perhaps because
in that era quizzing was largely confined to statistical data—remembering dates
and numbers, per capita income, growth, production data etc." said Balasubramaniam.
Therefore, he wanted to make quizzing entertaining, easier and more widely
sought and enjoyed. Soon, Giri and some of his classmates began developing such
quizzes. These quizzes, were more awareness based, they were about recent happenings.
Greycaps holds the merit of having held India's biggest business quiz—for Tata
Sons in 2004 called Tata Crucible–the quiz formed part of the centenary celebrations
of the Tatas, and has now become an annual event.
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Wood Worth
Imli Toshi Namo, a young innovator who grew up in Nagaland, spent his time
roaming around the sprawling bamboo plantations and observing the grass being
harvested and processed, before it was shaped into furniture or items of handicraft.
In 2006, Imli designed Arulepsa, the prototype of an integrated, precision-controlled,
bamboo processing machine. Arulepsa processes five feet of highly finished bamboo
per minute. That is approximately 25 times the speed of manual processing. "Even
then, the finished bamboo that Arulepsa produces is far more uniform, better
finished, well-planned and surfaced," according to Imli.
The prototype and its improvement cost him a total of INR 300,000 (US$ 6,725).
He received funding from the National Innovation Foundation (NIF) and the National
Bamboo Mission (NBM).
Imli says the first of the new machines should roll out by August this year.
He is thinking of pricing them at INR 80,000 (US$ 1,800) each.
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Express Innovation
Satish Deb of Bhilai in Chhattisgarh, an inspired innovator, has revived the
dying treadle presses with a cheap and easy conversion kit. He has converted
the slow and foot-operated treadle press into a smart screen printing press,
and has a US patent for his innovation.
Satish received his first patent on March 10, 1999 and now has five patents
for various versions of his machine. The innovation successfully combines the
technologies of screen printing with letter press machines. The cost of the
Motek India Treadle press kit is about Rs 25,000 (US$ 550), against Rs 125,000
(a little more than US$ 2750), for a new offset press. Satish’s kit increases
the efficiency of the treadle press at least five times, and makes the press
versatile.
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The Coolest Little Refrigerator For Rural
India
Godrej has developed a low-cost refrigeration solution, ChotuKool, to cater
to rural households in India. To popularise this 7.8 kg eco-friendly refrigerator
in rural India, Godrej is partnering with non-governmental organisations (NGOs)
and micro-finance institutions and collaborating with self-help groups.
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Cloud Surfing
Mumbai's Rajesh Jain, 41, founded Novatium, a Chennai-based company that makes
NetPC. The machine is based on cheap cell-phone chips and without the hard-
disk drive, extensive memory and pre packaged software that add hundreds of
dollars to the cost of regular PCs. Instead, NetPCs are little more than a keyboard,
a screen and a couple of USB ports - and use a central network server to run
software applications and store data. Novatium sells the NetPC for only US$
155.
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