Indore-based Varun Raheja, a mechanical engineering graduate, spent four years of his college focusing on researching farmer suicide rates and ways to increase their income.
“Whenever I saw farmers throwing their produce, I would wonder about ways to preserve it so that they can sell it for a better price. I found solar dryers as a sustainable choice,” he says.
By the end of engineering, he came up with a solution to help farmers turn excess produce into value-added products by using solar dryers.
He innovated foldable and portable solar dryers with capacities ranging from 20 to 100 kg.
“These are 40 feet long solar dryers that can be folded into a five-foot box. This helps us install them in remote locations,” says Varun.
So far, he has installed over 3,500 solar dryers in the remote farms of the country including Kashmir, Chhattisgarh, Madhya Pradesh, Manipur, Arunachal and Gujarat.
In the water-proof dryers, slices of vegetables are placed and within two to three days, the produce is sun-dried and ready to be converted into value-added products.
For example, sun-dried tomatoes are used to prepare oats and soups as well as pizza toppings. Raw bananas are converted into banana chips, grapes into raisins, and onions into onion flakes.
This helps increase the shelf life of perishable food products to a minimum of one year or more without using any additives or preservatives.
Starting from five kg, he has solar dryers up to a capacity of 1,000 kg. He has priced a 20 kg solar dryer at Rs 24,000 — at least half the price of those available in the market.
At least 50,000 farmers across the country have been able to reap benefits by boosting their income by 50 percent, thanks to these solar dryers.
“Honestly, I had never imagined that I would even reach this level. It is unbelievable most of the time that we have been able to reach the remotest locations across the country,” Varun adds.