RDKA-Sailing Solutions

I am Ravi Jyoti Deka and I started “RDKA I & I (OPC) PVT LTD” to create effective and affordable water transport solutions to revive the neglected waterways of India as a safe and low-pollution alternative to road transport.  

I have over 2 decades of industrial work experience and acknowledged as an innovator by the National Innovation Foundation, India and ASTEC, Assam. My earlier work with clean emulsified industrial fuels was highlighted by UNPD-GEF and covered by magazines like Fortune and Manufacturing Today. 

I first got involved in the Inland Waterways sector to market vessels, but quickly realised that any positive change has to start at the bottom; by upgrading the safety features of existing vessels, adopting new materials and construction techniques, and modernising the propulsion systems.

Our economical Diesel and the zero-emission  Electric Boat Motor will be an affordable and eco-friendly, simple yet modern locally-made alternative to the imported OBMs, providing very economical running costs and longer service life.  

The high cost of imported Outboard Motors and the lack of small propulsion systems is the Achilles heel of the Indian boating sector.

Our units would provide the ease of usage of an Outboard, the high torque and the economy of a Diesel engine or an electric motor, extreme shallow water capability at highly competitive prices. Once in production, they could play a major role in reviving the waterways, opening up new river routes as an alternative to roadways and also connecting remote areas to the nearest schools, markets and hospitals.

Hundreds of thousands of people in India daily use water transport to reach work, schools, and markets and back home on unsafe, leaky country boats powered by with outdated, underpowered and polluting engines. A situation compounded by the lack of modern small boat propulsion systems manufactured in the country.

Imported Petrol Outboard motors are too expensive to buy, run and maintain for the average boat owner, especially due to the high fuel cost and so the preferred method of propulsion are crude Agricultural Diesel engine based contraptions. Furthermore, neither the outboards nor the diesel units can run in shallow and muddy waters that characterize most of our waterways during the dry months as their propellers can get stuck and damaged, or the engine's water-cooling passages clogged with mud. These limitations have left huge stretches of Indian waterways as essentially unnavigable except by light flat-bottomed rowboats. It includes most of the smaller rivers during the dry season, the swampy water bodies in national parks and forests, and also international borders like the Kutch salt marshes or the Sunderban delta. Even during flood relief operations, rescue boats mostly depend on oar-power due to the OBM's shallow water limitations.

Our boat propulsion units design is based on the proven concept of Short-Tail boat motors, which are also known as a Mud Motors in the US or Boloxods in Russia. Outwardly, they look like Outboards due to their similar mounting systems and controls, but that’s where the resemblance ends. The 10KW Diesel engine and DC motor selected for powering our models both have a very high torque output which would easily propel the boats in both deep water and muddy areas.  The power is delivered via a centrifugal clutch and a reversing planetary gearbox to an extended propeller shaft by a triplex chain in an L-configuration to drive an S-shaped twin lobe surface-piercing mud propeller. Such a propeller is never fully submerged, which allows it to easily turn in mud, shallow areas as well to chop up weeds. And because of the air-cooling, there is no fear of engine overheating due to mud clogging up internal water-cooling passages as it regularly happens with OBMs. We have opted for simplicity and affordability, and have taken extraordinary efforts to arrive at a practical but effective and easily repairable mechanical design, in the process using more than 70% off-the-shelf components. 

Small boats in India are all built by village boat carpenters making wooden rowboats and motorized country boats. Over 20,000 motorized boats ply in the East Indian states of Assam and Bengal, and there are 73,000 registered small coastal fishing boats. Steel ferryboats are in short supply, plus they can't ply in shallow waters; meanwhile modern Fiberglass boats with outboard engines are unaffordable to most. 

Despite their poor safety record, these motorized boats are the sole means of transportation in thousands of square kilometer areas of various states and coastal areas, and providing many with a livelihood.

Their passengers are mostly from impoverished suburban and rural areas, who use them either to avoid a longer and costlier overland route or because no roads connect to their communities, like in the case of the river islands of the Brahmaputra in Assam or the Sundarban delta in Bengal.

The lack of shallow water propulsion and the high fuel cost associated with outboards has also left most riparian areas with zero law-enforcement as police lack means to patrol the areas.

Our motors would not only make boats travel faster and cheaper, but also let them reach new areas they could never go before.

The Elevate Prize is about the empowerment of marginalized people, especially those communities which need help the most. The entire objective behind my endeavor is to empower the various riparian communities of India and hopefully later across the world by introducing them to a safe, modern, sustainable, eco-friendly and most importantly, affordable means of water transport. To revive the waterways and make boats a safe, economical and an eco-friendly mode of transport, one eagerly used by people by choice and not due to lack of any other. 

It was while working in the seaside state of Goa, that I first came across relatively modern boatyards and immediately thought about transferring the technology to my home state Assam, where the waterways had been neglected for decades.  But things were easier said than done, as in the beginning nobody was interested, neither the government, nor the local boat builders or the boat owners, all content with what they had and not wanting to learn any better. Then a series of river accidents happened where people lost their lives, which got most of these motorised riverboats banned. In the meantime, I gave up trying to market catamarans and ferries reaslizing that change has to be brought about by empowering the people who have been plying boats on the river all those years, while the government ferries turned to rust. 

So I got involved in designing a safe, affordable, sustainably built and virtually capsize-proof Trimaran based on a FAO design, to use as a river taxi boat, but it proved an impossible task finding a cheap, portable propulsion system, capable of plying in shallow water. This led to the genesis of this project: When no solution is available, built your own! 

I belong to Assam in Northeast India, a state with over 2000 km of navigable waterways, including the Brahmaputra, but one not having a single modern boatyard. Where floods inundate large areas every summer, causing untold misery to people and animals alike, where the government's water transportation system has been neglected for decades and the river traffic consists mostly of  motorized country boats.  

Likewise, there are currently zero innovations or startup attempts in the field of water transport in India with an equal lack of interest towards it by both the authorities and incubators, as if the sector is irrelevant or doesn't exist at all. And yet everyday millions around the world use water transport to reach work, schools, markets and back home on archaic or utterly unsafe, leaky vessels with outdated polluting engines due to lack of alternatives. Even though I am not a marine professional by education or training, my years of persevering in this field has finally given me the recognition of an expert, which has convinced me all the more of the need for developing the sector. After all change has to begin somewhere, and someone has to take the first step! 

I can talk about my sizeable network among the government officials and professions in the field of water transport, about how I am invited to seminars to speak on the subject of water transport. About my sailing up the Brahmaputra in a country boat to learn about the river, of spending days inspecting engine rooms or about how experience mariners consider me to be one of their own. But what I feel really makes all the difference is a through understanding of engines and propulsion systems, my penchant and experience of tearing down and rebuilding engines, getting my hands dirty and of being both a designer and a draftsman. Added to is working on average 12 hours a day for the last three years shaping my projects, being a one-man government lobbyist, pitcher, seminar speaker, draftsman, designer and innovator. As a bootstrapper, I can't afford to pay a team of employees, but professionals whom I consult never found any major errors in my work. If the passion, zeal and drive with which I am pursuing my projects,  against all odds  and zero financial assistance, doesn't make me the best person for the job, then nobody else is as well.

My professional life has been about daily overcoming adversities because I studied Commerce but always worked in technical fields. I was also India's first Motorcycle lifestyle columnist, an assignment I landed as much for my writing skills as due to being an avowed gear-head. Likewise, I designed a Heavy Fuel Oil emulsion system from scratch when working for a steel manufacturer as I was given the assignment of reducing stack emissions and fuel consumption. A task that brought me into the focus of UNPD-GEF. 

Last year, though not being a marine engineer I was requested by the Assam Inland Water Transport department to survey their ailing ferry engines. Unable to afford hiring a Naval architect myself, the FAO fishery division has graciously provided me  boat designs and offered the complementary support of their in-house Naval architect for my project of building a prototype of a safer riverboat using Bamboo-Epoxy-Composite construction.  For all my efforts in trying to revive the river transport system in India, I haven't received a single dime as support or grants either in India or from overseas. Still, I have not given up!

I was working in a Steel manufacturing unit, where a new DRI plant had been commissioned in a very high rainfall area. Within 3 months of commissioning, the rainy season began and in to time all the internal roads became full of muck and had 50-ton trucks sinking in them. The civil engineers gave up and advised its closure till the rain got over. So I took over and ensure that not only the plant continued working but also rebuilt all the roads as well. I first identified the problem, which was that of clayey soil and used a US Army Engineers handbook and a series of articles on pozzolanic effect to find a remedy using the plant's fly ash and a truckload of lime. First, we drained the roads by digging furrows, next scoop up the mud, replace it with slag and rocks and build up a topping with morrum soil mixed with lime and fly ash. It was all done under severest rainfall with scores of labourers working tirelessly and me sitting perched atop a bulldozers' bonnet directing every step. Soon the naysayers had to stop laughing, and the workers still boast of our collective achievement.