Details: Manufacturing Pochampally silk saree requires a hand winding process of yarn (locally termed as Asu) before weaving various patterns on the loom in the traditional ‘Tie & Dye’ process. This is a very tedious and cumbersome process and involves about 9000 times to and fro hand movements for making one saree and takes one to one and half day in doing this for a saree. Conventionally, women have been undertaking this task for decades and suffering from back pain and drudgery. The Asu machine is an automatic machine consisting of a micro controller, motor, power transmission system and arrangement for switching over the yarn from one spoke to another. User needs to place bundle of yarn on the specified place, put the thread from the primary spoke to secondary spokes (other side) manually and switch on the machine. After that the machine follows adjusted sequence and completes the task automatically without any kind of human intervention. It completes the Asu making process in 1.5 hrs compared to 1 to 1.5 days in the manual method. This innovation has brought a revolution in the weaver community. Mallesham has sold more than 700 machines to the weavers in the districts of Nalgonda and Warangal districts in Telangana.

Innovator: C Mallesham, Nalgonda, Telangana

State: Nalgonda, Telangana

Funding agency: Department of Science and Technology, Govt of India

Implementing institute: National Innovation Foundation India (NIF), info.nif@nifindia.org