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 P.K
Ravi is a mechanic and workshop owner, hailing from the
remote village of Murikkassery, Idukki, Kerala. Right from
childhood he has shown interest in making machines and
spent time repairing them. Due to a financial crisis, he
discontinued his studies after intermediate and learned
welding works from nearby shops. After gaining sufficient
experience, he started his own workshop ‘our’
for welding and iron works. The making of iron gates,
grills and local welding was the major works he undertook.
A few years back he faced a crisis. There was
not much work for his workshop and under an acute
financial crisis his work came to standstill so he started
thinking of alternatives. Pepper is the major crop in
Idukki and he was aware of the problems faced by the
farmers threshing the pepper. Manual threshing is a very
tiresome and tedious job; usually women are involved in
it. He realized the potential of a mechanical thresher,
especially in hilly districts like Idukki and Wynad, and
set about to develop one.
He started working on
it, consulting several experts and farmers in this field,
but most of them discouraged him. In spite of all of this,
he continued his works and after years of hard work, he
finally came up with his first prototype. He tried
threshing some pepper from his farm and found it
successful. He named the thresher “aurora’ and
continued to modify it until at last he came up with a
finished product. He approached different financial
institutes for support and commercialization, but the
response was not encouraging. He also tried to avail a
loan by mortgaging his one and half acre land. This also
never materialized.
He then approached the
officials of the Spices Board and asked them to visit his
workshop. After visiting, they certified the superiority
of his machine and sanctioned a subsidy of 7000 Rs for the
thresher. He then decided to start production on a larger
scale. He borrowed money from moneylenders at exorbitant
interest rates to materialize his innovation. Later,
officials of Kerala Agricultural University, requested him
to demonstrate the machine at the University and they
recommended Ravi’s machine for the university centre.
Local media has highlighted Ravi’s innovation and
have given it wide coverage. Several pepper growers from
different areas and districts have visited him and have
been convinced and satisfied by its performance. By this
time Ravi has also filed a patent for his machine.
The
scientists of the center have documented the thresher in
detail and recommended it to the National Innovation
Foundation (an autonomous body under DST, Government of
India for promoting innovations of grassroots people) for
National Awards and subsequently Ravi won the National
Award from the former president of India, Dr. Abdul Kalam
on January 5th, 2007 during the 3rd National Award
Function of National Innovation Foundation.
The
machine ‘Aurora’ is superior to all machines
available in the market. As compared to the conventional
thresher, Ravi’s innovation has a number of
advantages. The machine can be operated automatically and
manually. Two models are there: a big model which has a
capacity of 100 Kg and can thresh 600 Kg of pepper per
hour and a small model which has a capacity of 50 Kg and
can thresh 300 Kg /hr. Manually one labourer can separate
150 Kg of berries from spikes in a day. The machines
operates with half HP and one HP motors. For one hour of
work, the machine only uses 6.5 units of electricity. The
machine has facilities not only to grade the berries, but
also for making white pepper. The cost of machine is
around thirty thousand rupees.
More than ninety
percent of the berries can be separated from the spikes in
one run and no damage occurs to skin of the pepper,
whereas in the conventional machine 20 % of the skin is
destroyed. Pepper can be collected without the need of
manual labour, but in the conventional device it needs to
be collected manually. By changing the leaf blade, this
machine can also be used for threshing white pepper and
paddy.
The machine consists of a feeding hopper
made of an iron sheet, rotating wire –loop-threshing
drum. The harvested pepper spikes are directly fed to the
hopper in the rotating drums; the threshed pepper passes
down through the perforations and gets collected at the
berry outlets. Cleaning can be done by manually cranking
the threshing drum. After cleaning, the machine is ready
for next lot of fresh pepper.
Ravi has received
orders from the neighbouring states of Karnataka and
Tamilnadu and he has already supplied 120 machines. NIF
has sanctioned a loan from its micro venture innovation
fund for scaling up his innovation.
The
technology is capable of generating employment, especially
among women’s self help groups, and the center ‘Land
to Lab Initiatives’ under Peermade Development
Society has already taken efforts to popularize the
technology through its women’s self help groups.
Several women’s groups in Idukki have started pepper
thresher units by installing Ravi’s thresher for
threshing their own pepper and have also started to
generate revenue by threshing others.
Ravi’s
family consists of his wife Geeta, and two children.
Recently he developed a cocoa harvester and is looking for
venture capitalists to scale up his innovation.
Contact
Address of Innovator:
P.K Ravi
Palathumthalakkal
Upputhodu
Pin: 685 602,
Idukki, Kerala ,
Mobile: 9495127730
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