Tamil Nadu Man Makes Patented Technology To Convert Banana Waste Into Ropes

TN School Dropout Developed A Machine To Convert Banana Waste Into Ropes For Bags And Baskets!

PM Murugesan, an inhabitant of Melakkal town in Madurai area, almost twenty years prior, figured out how to utilize the residual banana fibre to mesh them into ropes. These could then be utilized to make different items like mats, sacks, and so on.
The Beginnings

Due to his family’s poor conditions, Murugesan could not finish his education post class 8. He was forced to help his father in the fields as his family did not see much use in his education. He grew up seeing a lot of banana waste being generated around him, which got him thinking about ways to utilise them.

PM Murugesan with his processed banana fibre

It was 2008 when Murugesan, his wife, Malarkodi, and the other family elders started discussing utilising the banana plant waste. The idea struck him on seeing a banana thread being used to thread flowers to create garlands. The sheer difficulty in keeping the rope from breaking apart was a challenge to him. He used a machine that converted coconut husk into ropes for bananas, but it failed.

Using the failure as a crutch, he took that machine and modified it to work for bananas. Upon its success, he added a motor to make it work faster. Working it up further, he used bicycle wheel rims and pulleys to build a spinning machine. He ended up investing INR 1.5 Lakhs and built and patented this machine. He then went to the Biotechnology Industry Research Assistance Council (BIRAC) with his invention and they liked his machine and recommended other farmers in the area to use it.


Evolution Of Business

In 2017, Murugesan built up a mechanized rope making machine, in which dual functions could be performed of making the rope and interlacing/twining it together. Murugesan said that he was utilizing a hand-wheel component to make rope from the banana sheath, and that took five individuals for every wheel for the cycle, and each wheel yielded distinctly around 2,500 metres of rope. With the new machine, they produced on normal 15,000 metres utilizing one machine and with only four individuals in all.

   

Employees at work

They started with five people, which increased to ten, very quickly to twenty, and as of today, they employ over 350 people, with a majority of women in their ranks. Taking the decentralization aspect of a job into account, the work routine is very flexible as the women work from home, weaving new things that can also be coupled as gifts for their children while earning them a decent income. The company currently earns an annual turnover of INR 1.5 crores.
Accolades

He has won seven National Awards and several State Awards, which include the PMEGP (Prime Minister’s Employment Generation Programme) Award from Khadi and Village Industries Commission under the Ministry of Micro, Small and Medium Enterprises, National Farmer Scientist Award from Union Ministry for Agriculture and Best Entrepreneur Award from Krishi Vigyan Kendra at Jabalpur.

Despite these accolades, Murugesan feels the most satisfied knowing that he brought about an upheaval of his village and bringing them employability simultaneously.

Image Sources: Google Images

Sources: India Times, The Better India

What exactly differentiates between a start-up CEO and an entrepreneur?

 

Google’s CEO, Larry Page got the initial idea of an algorithm to collect data from the world wide web. He used his technical skills to collect data, but there was no business model behind the ‘invention’ yet.

This was the innovation.

The entrepreneurial idea happened when Larry Page noticed that the entire Web was connected by links and envisioned that each of these links could be considered as a “referral.” Web pages with more referrals are more valuable for users than others.[1]

Sergey Brin soon joined Larry Page on the quest to create an algorithm that would identify each webpage and give it a ‘value’ based on these backlinks.

Brin and Page, together, developed the PageRank algorithm. They envisioned that their algorithm could be used to build a far superior search engine compared to the existing ones.

That was the business idea.

They started working using Stanford University’s infrastructure from their dorm-rooms. Eventually, the growth of the project caused Stanford's computer networks to experience problems.

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Now, to answer your question, what exactly differentiates a start-up CEO from an entrepreneur?

Larry Page was the founding CEO of Google from September 1998 to August 2001 when he stepped down in favor of Eric Schmidt.

Larry acted as founder and entrepreneur for those three years.

Larry and Sergey owned the vision to use their innovation to solve a big problem in the world. Identifying and PROVING their business idea was Larry’s main responsibility as founding CEO of Google.

As the business grew exponentially, so did their need of cash. When they accepted about $50 million in investment from Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers and Sequoia Capital, Larry agreed to step down in order to bring on an experienced leader who could build a "world-class management team."

This is when Eric Schmidt took over Google as Startup CEO.

His role was to manage the growth and build a strong team to execute the vision. Larry later called this ‘parental supervision’ in an interview back in 2001.[2]

The entrepreneur is the individual who has the vision and sees an opportunity in the marketplace. The Startup CEO’s main function is to execute and scale such vision.

What is something that almost nobody knows about entrepreneurship?

This is Mr. Andrew Carnegie, once the richest man in the world.

He arrived in America with no money and with no formal higher education.

His parents decided to move the Carnegie family to the United States in 1848 after a famine hit the Scottish countryside. When he arrived in America at thirteen years old, he found a job that would pay him $1.20 for a 70-hour week.

During his free time, Carnegie read books loaned to him from one of the local libraries. (Later in his life, he never forgot how important these books were to his life, so he donated his money to building over 2,500 public libraries and important educational institutions around the world.)

When Carnegie was about 18 years old, Thomas Scott, the owner of the Pennsylvania Railroad Company, employed him as a telegraph operator at a salary of $4.00 per week.

By age 24, Mr. Scott saw great potential in the young Carnegie, and asked him if he could handle being superintendent of a division of the Pennsylvania Railroad Company. He took the role, and his relationship with Mr. Scott grew stronger.

Mr. Scott later became Carnegie's mentor, which lasted until 1878, when Scott suffered a stroke that limited his ability to work. Despite this layoff in interaction, the relationship through the previous years changed Carnegie's future.

The experience gained working closely to Scott was a vital ingredient in his extraordinary success in the steel industry. Selling his company to JP Morgan would later make Carnegie the wealthiest man in the world and the extraordinary philanthropist he later became.

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Now, to answer your question, what is something that almost nobody knows about entrepreneurship?

This is culinary school. It’s very “similar” to Mr. Andrew Carnegie's classroom.

How is it similar?

Chefs learn by doing. They test and practice. They burn food, and try again, and again, and again. They sometimes cut themselves, often it happens again and again.

People may know this, but hesitate to believe that … :

• A college degree is not needed to become a successful entrepreneur. It’s been proven over and over again in history that this is true.
• College teaches what has been done in the past, not what hasn’t. Entrepreneurs look forward. They observe the world around them and anticipate market trends.
• The years and money people spend “writing papers” could be spent creating and starting a small business. People learn much more during one year in the startup world than the whole four years in college. Also, chances are, it will be cheaper.
• “But starting a business won't guarantee any success!” True. Does any college guarantee you a job, or give you your money back? No! They take your money and run!

• Many people think that they need an MBA to be a successful entrepreneur. False. An MBA is a “Master of Business Administration.” Let me translate what “Administration” means:
  Administration is running a business, NOT starting one.
• Do you see anyone “cooking” here?

A chef is not a chef until he/she cooks something.

An entrepreneur is not an entrepreneur until he delivers value.

Get out of the classroom and start cooking!

How did Steve manage to “Think Different?”

 

Steve was a dropout, a rebel, but most importantly, Steve was FREE!

Steve enjoyed complete self-governance, total independence to be himself, and would never conform to or follow the crowd.

Steve was not a people pleaser. He was driven by his passion and vision, NOT by other people’s opinions.

Why don’t we have more Steve’s in the world?

Our Industrial Age educational system has one mission to accomplish:

STANDARDIZE!

The educational system tells us what to think, NOT how to think.

Indoctrination is oppressive, it kills creativity and innovation.

Indoctrination has been an effective way to mold people to fit the “status quo” and NOT challenge it.

Why doesn't the world see more creative geniuses?

Because we’re expected to follow the crowd.

To answer the question, what made Steve Jobs so special?

Steve was FREE from indoctrination!

Real education teaches you how to solve problems, how to create things, and most importantly, how to THINK DIFFERENT!

#BusinessSmart

What business ideas make a person a millionaire?

 

No, I'm not talking about Mark Zuckerberg, pay attention to the boy next to him, in 2005 Alex Tew, 21 years old, came up with an idea with which to make some extra money, because in the end he ended up with a million dollars

How?

Alex created a completely blank web page, with dimensions of 1000 x 1000, that is, a million pixels, then he contacted a lot of advertisers and offered them to advertise on his page at the modest price of $ 1 per pixel.

The result? See for yourself

A web page 1 million pixels bought for advertising or what is the same, 1 million dollars in total for having sold all the available space of your web page.

The site was called milliondollarhomepage(.com)

How about? If an absurd idea works, is it still absurd?

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