: Rickshaw Puller Turns Innovator; Builds Devices That Earn Lakhs Helps Uplift 1000s #IndiaNEWS #Farming Dharambir Kamboj, popularly known as ‘Kissan Dharambir’, is the quintessential Indian success

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Rickshaw Puller Turns Innovator; Builds Devices That Earn Lakhs Helps Uplift 1000s #IndiaNEWS #Farming
Dharambir Kamboj, popularly known as ‘Kissan Dharambir’, is the quintessential Indian success story. From a cycle rickshaw puller working on the streets of Delhi, the 58-year-old from Damla village in Yamunanagar district, Haryana, has gone on to become a farmer, rural innovator and entrepreneur.
In 2013, he even received a National Award from the President of India.
From sweating and freezing it out on the streets of Delhi to pay the Rs 6 per day rent to operate a cycle rickshaw, he today earns Rs 15-20 Lakh per annum from the sale of his patented portable multipurpose food processing (MPP) machine. The MPP machine processes a large variety of fruits, herbs and vegetables. Going further, he also earns an additional Rs 8 lakh (per annum) from the sale of processed products sourced from the produce grown on his two-acre farm.
The MPP machine also forms the backbone of his efforts to help fellow farmers and rural micro-entrepreneurs earn better profits, improve incomes and find employment. So far, his enterprise, Dharambir Food Processing Private Limited, has organised training programmes and workshops for more than 7,000 people across the country, including more than 4,000 women, besides supplying MPP machines to countries like the United States, Italy, Nepal, Australia, Kenya, Nigeria, Zimbabwe, Uganda, etc.
Along the way, Dharambir has gone on to win other accolades like the State Award by National Innovation Foundation and Indian Council for Agricultural Research’s ‘Farmer Scientist Award’.
“By supporting social enterprises working in this sector to scale and succeed, what Powering Livelihoods, a Council on Energy, Environment and Water (CEEW)-Villgro initiative, also tries to achieve is to motivate grassroots innovators to embrace entrepreneurship fearlessly. Dharambir Food Processing is a role model enterprise on that front, and the struggle of the entrepreneur is motivating beyond words,� shares Ananth Aravamudan, the Sector Head overseeing Climate Action projects at Villgro, an incubator of social enterprises, speaking to The Better India.
Here’s the story of how this remarkable Indian made it this far in life.
MPP Machine
Humble Origins
Dharmbir, the son of humble farmers who also ran a small flour mill and made jaggery blocks out of sugarcane, was always a keen innovator. By the time he was five, he had already learnt how to operate a flour mill from his uncles. Then, in Class 8, he made an emergency lighting device using battery cells and diodes with assistance from his science teacher.
But after his matriculation, he had to give up formal education because his mother and sister fell seriously ill.

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