Coconut dehusking machine becoming popular in Mangaluru

MANGALURU: Sathyashankar K, a

commerce graduate

, and his cousin Muralikrishna K, a mechanical engineer, decided to quit their jobs in the city and return to

agriculture

. After much planning, they launched Kalpa Agri Services in Puttur, and are now taking their automatic

coconut dehusking machine

to villages in Puttur and Sullia.

Sathyashankar, who worked for an IT major in Bengaluru for a year, said, "The agriculture sector is affected by labour crisis and we’ve been thinking of innovations to tackle it. The areca dehusking machine is becoming popular and we wanted to do something similar for coconuts. We heard industries in Coimbatore were making these machines and participated in an agriculture fair supported by the Tamil Nadu government in Coimbatore.

They studied various machines at the exhibition and bought a machine from ARS Engineering,Coimbatore for around Rs 2.7 lakh. "We realised the machine was not up to the mark and the output was not as claimed by the company.

Muralikrishna provided valuable inputs to the company and spent almost a month with the manufacturer and modified the design. The damage was reduced from 30% to 1%,” said Sathyashankar. In April this year, the duo set up their store in Kabaka, Puttur. Other than selling organic agriculture feed, they also sell batteries. Sathyashankar said users have the option to dehusk the coconut fully or partially, leaving the top portion of the coir intact. The machine can dehusk about 600 coconuts per hour and they charge 80 paise per coconut. The machine runs on a 3HP motor.

“The initial response to the machine has been good. The output depends on the size of the coconut and the person handling the machine. We take the machine to every village and staff assists villagers in dehusking. So far, at least 50,000 coconuts have been dehusked,” he said. Meanwhile, a video on how the machine operates has gone viral.


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