How an Enterprising Farmer Came Up With Innovative Solutions That Won Him the President’s Award

Necessity is the mother of invention, and that's what prompted Kadavendi Mahipal Chary, a 42-year-old farmer to come up with innovative solutions like mini-cultivator, mini-tractor, power weeders, and hydraulic lifts for farmers who couldn’t afford expensive equipment available in the market and so ended up doing back-breaking work on the field. Chary, who couldn’t complete his 10th board exams, worked as a bike mechanic. Later he returned to his village to work on his father’s 2-acre land. In those days he couldn’t afford laborers or cows to plough the land. With the knowledge he gained from repairing tractors he started designing the mini-cultivator for ploughing. Chary admits that his initial effort, which involved an auto-rickshaw motor, was unsuccessful. The mini-cultivator functioned after he modified a China-made engine that he had purchased in Hyderabad. After that, he started generating more, he claims. Buoyed by the positive response, Chary is currently producing cultivators by putting together engines from Kolhapur and materials and gears from Hyderabad. His company, Varun Engineering Works, employs 12 people, and they have so far sold about 4,000 cultivators. Chary states that with the machine, a farmer can typically till two to three acres of land in three hours using one liter of diesel. The equipment only costs Rs 50,000, whereas using cows would cost at least Rs 1 lakh and require upkeep. Apart from the cultivator, Chary has also developed a power weeder (20 units have been sold), a mini-truck attached to a trolley that can tow up to one ton, and a tractor hydraulic lift that can lift 500 kg. For his innovations, Chary received the President's Award in 2015 and the National Entrepreneurship Award in 2018