The Solar Cooking Archive

 

Interview with Ravindra and Shobha Pardeshi Inventors of the Parvati Solar Cooker

Conducted 04 May 2007 in Pune, Maharashtra, India by SCI Association's founding member Bernie Mueller
[Deutsche Version]

Ravindra and Shobha PardeshiSCI: Mr. and Mrs. Pardeshi, thanks for the invitation to your home. It is a honour to meet important inventors like you are.
R. & Sh.P.: We did not know that the inventors of the Parvati solar cooker are really that important. The feeling to be honoured is on our side.

SCI: The drawings and pictures point out, that you are highly educated. Is that right?
R. & Sh.P.: No, both of us are normally educated but with special interests in mathematics and physics.

SCI: What ignited your invention?
R. & Sh.P.: A huge percentage of the population in our country lives in poverty, although the sun shines almost every day. We found out that we could reduce our own cooking energy bills and help others to do so as well. In India low-cost solar cookers were not available.

SCI: Like most inventors in our community you are working full time to earn your money. Doesn't the invention of solar cookers pay you a lot of license fees or something else like that?
R. & Sh.P.: No, not at all. In fact, when we started to construct the Parvati solar cooker there was little interest for cardboard cookers in India. Spreading and advocating solar cooking became easier during the past years with the help of the Internet. Especially the restless work of our common friend Dr. Ashok Kundapur from Udupi has to be mentioned.

SCI: Are there other obstacles?
R. & Sh.P.: There are many of them. Let me only mention the unavailability of certain materials in India. From time to time the prices are increasing suddenly, without notification.

SCI: Don't give up!
R. & Sh.P.: No, in fact we are constructing a foldable solar cooker to make it easy to build, pack, ship and store.

SCI: Do you charge license fees?
R. & Sh.P.: Not, if the Parvati solar cooker is built as one prototype for testing and demonstrating. In such a case it would be enough to mention us as inventors. But if it is built and distributed commercially, we will ask for a license fee.

SCI: Do you know SCI's Wiki system?
R. & Sh.P.: Yes, we look at it and use it from time to time.

SCI: Mr. and Mrs. Pardeshi, thank you for the interview. It was a pleasure being your guest.
R. & Sh.P.: Thank you too, the pleasure is on our side.

 
 
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