A young assistant professor of the department of fuel, minerals and metallurgical engineering of IIT (ISM), Pankaj Kumar Jain, is set to launch an innovative pencil sharpener that not only increases the life of pencil but also helps to save the metal used in making the blade.

Developed during his student days at IIT (ISM), Jain filed for a patent last year after using it for more than seven years.

Though it takes around four to five years to get a patent approved, since his invention has already been published, he is planning to launch it under Artinotech Private Limited, a company established under the faculty entrepreneurship scheme of IIT (ISM).

Talking to the Telegraph Online on Saturday, Jain who is also the vice-chairman of Career and Development Cell of IIT (ISM) said, “The sharpener can help to the pencil last for a longer period of time as due to the cylindrical shape given to lead, it contains larger volume unlike the conical shape developed by the traditional sharpeners available in the market.”

“It is based on a simple mechanical principle that cylindrical shape has three times larger volume compared to a conical shape,” said Jain.

Jain during his days at IIT (ISM) in 2007-2012 remained quite socially active besides being good in academics as he served as the coordinator of IIT (ISM) student society which imparts free of cost education to the children of adjoining slum areas of the institute besides imparting, skill-oriented training to their parents.

Divulging more details, Jain said as there is lesser use of sharpener due to larger volume of lead generated for use every time after the sharpening the life of the sharpener also gets increased due to its lesser contrary to the traditional sharpener which due to generating lesser volumes of lead are required to use frequently.

“Depending on the required thickness of the lead we have developed five different kinds of sharpeners which generate leads of different thickness having 0.5, 0.6,0.7, 0.8, 0.9 and 1 mm diameter,” said Jain and added that the pencil can sharpen, a wooden as well as mechanical pencil and generates consistent long cylindrical writing tip.

Jain under the aegis of his company has also developed a network of visiting cards titled eVCards of e Visiting Cards in which one connects with the other user using the e Visiting cards.

"Unlike the traditional printed visiting cards which are afflicted with the issue of wearing out, the difficulty of updation and eventually are thrown out, the eVCards besides being cost-effective also does away with the problem of wearing out and lack of updation.