- Renita a secretary at a milk society ventured into her entrepreneurial unit with Gokulsons Food Processing Unit
- Giving Solution to his wife’s business, K K Shabu made hand drawings for three months in making a Pancake Machine
- The Pancake Machine was developed by a local fabrication unit at a cost of ₹6 Lakhs
Most of us at some point in our life must have heard the famous saying “Behind every successful man, there is a woman.” K K Shabu from Angamali, a small town in Kerala doesn’t disagree with it even one bit. But he just proved that this famous quote is not gender-biased and sometimes the saying can also be true the way round. And how he did!
Through his innovation that stands apt for Necessity is the mother of Invention. This was true in the life for K K Shabu, when he designed machines to ease work in food making at the time it required in his wife Renitha’s food processing unit. Through apparently frugal scientific K K Shabu made a huge impact on not only his wife Renitha’s life but also on others.
From Milk Society to Gokulsons Food Processing Unit
This happened in Gokulsons Food Processing Unit, a women entrepreneurial unit which is run by Shabu’s wife Renitha. She was an ordinary woman working as a secretary at a milk society near her house. But she had always kept a wish in her mind to do something for an additional income. They have to earn extra to repay a bank loan taken for completing their house construction. However, there was no opportunity to do that.
The turnaround in the life of Renitha happened when some youngsters from a nearby club approached Renitha to get some food serving for their trip during the Onam season in 2005. She agreed and cooked idli for them. Their good feedback on her cooking made a spark in her mind. It gave her enough confidence to decide to start a food business.
She started her venture Gokulsons Food Processing Unit, with idli as a single food item at her house with a tabletop grinder, set up the workplace near her house to sell her product. The first day she got only an order of sixty-five idly and the numbers were increased gradually, with more delicacies getting added like Dosa, Appam, the delicious authentic Kerala snacks, and breakfasts.
A Fractured Leg, But Innovative Mind: Shabu’s invention
The need of the hour compelled him to find a way to ease the workload and catering orders within the time. He understood that machines are its ideal solution, and can ease the trouble at hand. The design of machines was developed in his mind while he was taking rest at home due to a fracture on his leg sustained from still indulging in his childhood knack for playing football.
He started grafting ideas and noted them in a book from time to time. When he was cured after three months, he approached engineering workshops to do the prototype for his design. But nobody had the confidence to execute the blueprint Shabu developed over three months. At last, he found his partners at an ordinary workshop, who agreed to fabricate the machine. With the help of them, Shabu made his pancake production machine, with a cost of six lakh rupees, and later he designed a tabletop machine for the same.
It was a rotating system with 16 frying pans fixed over gas flame burners. Dough pot could be fixed in a certain position. Every time machine rotates with the pan reaching in front of the dough pot, pan lids would be opened and a fixed quantity of dough poured it into automatically. When the machine completes its one rotation dough would be fried, the lid of the pan would be opened just before the dough pot fixed. Then pancake could be taken out from frying pans. So, within an hour, 400 to 700 pancakes could be fried. Shabu also had redesigned coconut grater and automatic pressing idiyappam making machine according to convenience.
Shabu, an apparently non-descript man from an equally non-descript small town, exhibited India’s true manufacturing excellence and spirit and hence cuts a proud figure as a true Machine Maker of India.
