India was always a fertile land for innovations. The most notable Indian inventions range from number Zero to some high end technologies that we use every day. Today, we would like to share a story of one man who has done about 118 innovations starting from the late 1980s. He proved that innovation is not a high-end activity that takes place only in sophisticated laboratories. Take a look at some of his wonderful innovations.

Assam-born mechanical engineer Uddhab Bharali, who dropped out of college in 1987 because of acute poverty was excelled in academics and was notorious for asking too many questions. Born to a businessman father in Lakhimpur of Assam, the fact that he was academically extraordinarily bright was of no consequence at home.

In 1988, when his family was in debt, he decided to start a polyethene making business. However, instead of spending about a lakh rupees on buying a machine, he designed his own for about 67,000 rupees when the company made machines were priced at Rs. 4 lakh. This was the start, after that the list of his innovations increased. He developed more than 85 engineering devices for different purposes in agriculture. Out of these thirteen are commercialised.

Although he continued building products for rural and commercial purposes, his talent and innovations had been brought to the public knowledge for the very first time in 1995, when famous story-writer and novelist Arnab Jan Deka wrote an article about him and his innovations in ‘Dainik Assam’ newspaper. Within a few months, Arnab Jan Deka wrote the first ever English article on Uddhab Bharali in another English daily The Assam Express.

Both these articles by the famous author-technocrat made Bharali a household name in Assam, and paved the way for wider appreciation and recognition of his talent, even drawing the attention of Discovery Channel and other global media. In 2005, the National Innovation Foundation took him aboard as a grassroots innovator, where he soon came up with a design of a benchtop pomegranate de-seeding machine. His machine was recognized as the first of its kind not only in India but across the world. With this invention, Bharali even entered into an online voting competition for the NASA Exceptional Technology Achievement Medal in 2012.

The serial innovator has since then built a mini tea plant which helps small-time farmers, a portable cassava peeler that can process up to 5 kg of cassava per minute, an areca nut peeling machine with a capacity to peel 100-120 nuts in a minute, a garlic peeling machine, a paddy thresher, a tobacco leaf cutter, a cane stripping machine, a Safed Musli peeling machine, a brass utensil polishing machine, a jatropha de-seeder, a mechanized weeding machine, and a trench digger, chopper for cattle and fisheries feed; among over hundred other inventions, mostly solving problems in the field of agriculture.

Many of his innovations are popular in foreign countries. The Central Silk board sought his guidance to redesign a sophisticated reeling machine. He also designed a stevia pulveriser & passion fruit gel extractor for North Eastern Region Community Resource Management Project (NERCRMP).

In 2007, he was awarded with ‘Shristi Samman Award’. He is a recipient of ‘President’s Grassroots Innovation Award’, 2009. He is the winner of engineering design contest organized by NASA Tech ‘Create the Future Design Contest’ for the year 2012 and 2013. He is also the recipient of ‘Rashtriya Ekta Samman, in 2013. He was one of the speakers in TEDxISMDhanbad held in October 2014.

Mr. Bharaliis also a resource scholar for the Indian Institute of Entrepreneurship and a technical consultant to Rural Technology Action Group (RUTAG) for the development of technology at the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT), Guwahati.

In one of his interviews, Uddhab said, “I believe that developing new machines comes naturally to me and it is this flair which helped me repay my father’s debts by starting a polyethene film making industry to cater to the demand from the surrounding tea estates. Even now, I have 53 projects on hand and I am currently responsible for an average of eight projects a month.”

Mr. Bharali has also set up a research workshop in his hometown to help local communities and industries solve their technological needs in his hometown of North Lakshimpur on the banks of the river Brahmaputra. He uses the money he makes in housing 20 underprivileged kids, providing them with food, amenities, and training them in technology.