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.

Can you tell what exactly did Amazon "invent'?

 

What you guys never thought of doing.

It isn't always about inventing things. What Amazon did can be simply termed as redefining the retail, continuously taking the shopping experience to newer levels.

                                 

Customer ratings and reviews, one click purchase, automated recommendations based on search and purchase history. These are few things that Amazon invented. There are also some technologies that weren't invented by Amazon but made more accessible, for example cloud computing and virtual assistants.

The best customer service is if the customer doesn't need to call you, doesn't need to talk to you. It just works.

#amazon an #amazing journey

It was predicted by a lot of economists, economic philosophers, and even research scientists back in the early 1900s that when Rockefeller had become insanely wealthy because of efficient manufacturing, the next biggest thing in the world would be efficient distribution, which was definitely done in the best way possible by Amazon.

This photo from 1998 brings back some great memories! [left-to-right with Junglee CEO Rakesh Mathur, COO Ram Shriram (& among first Google investors!), and Jeff Bezos