The Innovator

The heart and soul behind this revolutionary innovation in the unexplored field of bulk mail processing and sorting is Shri. P. J. Varghese.

Here is his life story

After his school days in St. Berchman’s High School and graduation from St. Berchman’s College in the small town of Changanassery, in the southernmost state of Kerala in India, he joined India Post in 1973 (then called Post and Telegraph Department). During his service in India Post, he kept his eyes and ears open and was able to observe very many bottlenecks and constraints for the smooth functioning of the typical government department. Many of his suggestions were appreciated, accepted and implemented by the department.

When he stepped down from the department after 37 years of service he had in his mind the concept and a blueprint of an imaginary machine that would do some kind of pre-sorting of the millions of periodicals and other mails that transit through the Postal System every day at concessional postage! Such a machine would make India Post more efficient and save for the nation millions of rupees. This is made possible by avoiding multiple sorting interventions by Department employees along the long transit line of the articles from the source Post Office to any one of the 19,097 PIN destinations anywhere between Kashmir and Kanyakumari!

When nearly every one of his compatriot pensioners were “retired“ from active life, his tenacity of purpose and an innate ability to ‘think outside the box’ or “venture into un-charted waters” is a mental faculty every one of his friends and family are proud of. Slow but steady in 3 years of his retirement he had brought to shape a “ Computer Assisted, Software Driven, Conveyer Belt Type Machine “ that would do all the jobs he had envisaged in his “ Letter-sorting- Dilemma” as the Post Master of HPO Changanassery His brain-child machine christened SORTIT HSM-100 has been granted patent by Government of India Patent Office, Patent No. 351547, and “A SORTING MACHINE FOR SORTING REGULAR BULK MAILS”

His wife Mrs. Lisamma George ( Rtd High School Headmistress) and 2 sons gave him their boundless emotional support in this venture. Mr. T. O. Suresh Kumar, Director, Maks Automation, Kottarakkara and Mr. J. Vinoj Kumar, Software Developer Winsoft Solutions, Changanassery gave their technical guidance and support to bring the idea into reality.

Two such machines have clocked, one 6 years of successful service at Malayala Manorama Co. Ltd, Kottayam, and other 1 year service at Mathrubhumi Publications, Kozhikode, the leading Newspaper companies in Kerala. An official approval from Department of Posts ( DOP) is awaited.

He is residing in his home town Changanassery with his family.