It is often said that India is a land of underutilized opportunities. The entire world is impressed by the intellectual prowess of Indians, which is evident from the fact that Indians are the biggest ethnic group after the Caucasians engaged in Silicon Valley.
However, this intellectual prowess has hardly received any encouragement in India, where someone carrying paper degrees can outsmart a really skilled individual. This Indian talent finds an outlet when it reaches offshore, while in India, it stagnates into oblivion.
Vinod Sharma, a resident of the Bundu Katra area of Agra, which is right behind the Army Base Workshop, may look like an ordinary middle-aged guy going about the daily drudgeries of life, but he is much more than that. An innovator par extraordinaire, Vinod Sharma has a unique talent for converting any polluting automobile into its alternative, eco-friendly version.
Developed Gas-based Engine in 1999
Extremely handy with automobiles, Vinod Sharma designed his first gas-fuelled engine in 1999, while he was working as an engine assembler in an automobile company. He claims that the gas vaporizer currently used in automobiles was originally based on his design, which he had presented to the company he worked in, but was rejected as impractical and expensive to patent.
Using that vaporizer design, Sharma designed a gas-operated two-wheeler and a gas-based generator. Sharma says that he demonstrated this generator to the UP Pollution Control Board officials as well as several public representatives, but he never received the support he needed to take this innovation to the next level.
He says that he was offered an opportunity to demonstrate his gas-based engine model to foreign automobile makers, but he decided to keep this innovation within the country. However, in India, his innovation has never brought him any money or fame.
Shifted focus to e-vehicles
With the government’s focus shifting to e-vehicles, Sharma stopped gas-engine development and developed an e-rickshaw, and an e-cargo three-wheeler with his own funds, using domestically available technology. He demonstrated the innovation to several rickshaw manufacturers and while the same technology is used today in all e-rickshaws, Sharma never got anything for his idea.
A few years earlier, Sharma designed an electric bicycle using his own funds and even presented it to the Union Minister of State for SME Pratap Chandra Sarangi, who appreciated the innovation and even rode the bicycle till the Parliament, but there has been no communication from the ministry since then.
He said that although there are many battery-based two-wheelers in the market, this bicycle offers advanced features like regenerative charging at a very low cost, which is easily affordable to the common man, in comparison to the hugely expensive electric two-wheelers that are being commercially marketed today. He said that with regenerative charging, this e-bicycle has almost unlimited range and he rode this bicycle without plugging it into any electrical outlet, from Agra to Delhi, a distance of over 250 km, after being encouraged by the Agra MP SP Singh Baghel. He laments that although a number of ministers and other dignitaries saw the bicycle and rode it in Delhi, they did not offer any support.
No commercial success
Talking to Agra24, Sharma said that despite his efforts to develop inexpensive pollution-free technology for the common man, he has had no commercial success in large-scale manufacturing of his innovations due to the paucity of funds and lack of marketing skills.
He said that his wife had to sell her jewelry to support his innovations and now he does not have any funds to commercially launch his e-bike in the market. Asked if he has approached commercial companies with his technology, he said that he has demonstrated his innovations to several companies, only to find his innovations being commercially exploited by those companies at a later date, without giving him any credit.
Never got government support
Sharma alleged that he did not have any funds to get his innovations patented and when he requested the National Innovators Foundation (NIF) for support, they too leaked his projects to commercial companies, after which he left the NIF in 2014.
When Agra24 inquired about his efforts to obtain loans offered to the SME sector under the Mudra Yojana, Sharma said that obtaining the loan is not easy. He has applied several times but got rejected. Also, the amount offered under the Mudra Yojana is so less and the interest margin is so high, that using that loan to launch a commercial company is hardly feasible.
Common Man’s e-Car
He said that he is now looking for investors, who can work with him into launching his innovations commercially. He has already drawn up plans to build a ‘Common Man’s e-Car’. He also plans to build a ‘Battery Vehicle Hospital’, which will repair and allow the burned-out and discarded Chinese gadgets used in battery vehicles, to be reused.
“I’ve already presented these plans to the Transportation Minister Nitin Gadkari, I hope he will respond someday,” says Sharma, with a blank hopeless look in his eyes.
Living in Poverty
Today, Sharma lives in a house that badly needs repairs, but he does not have any money to get it repaired. Living in abject poverty, Sharma barely has the finances to support his family and after Covid-19, his financial situation has deteriorated further. Attempts to obtain government-supported housing under the Pradhanmantri Awas Yojana have failed and he is reeling under the burden of loans that he is trying hard to pay off. “If I do not get any investors or commercial success in my innovations now, perhaps the time has come for me to accept that there is no hope for ingenuity and innovation in India,” He says.
