Blade Runner

In 1956,his father,Jalil Ur Rehman,started making sharpeners. “My father worked in Lal Quan where he sharpened blades. One day a customer asked him to design a blade for a German sharpener. He experimented by cutting a thin portion of metal from a saw and pasting it on the plastic sharpener,” says Sultan,surrounded by sharpeners in all shapes at his home-cum-office in Bulbulli Khana.

With 37 hand moulding machines and a work force of three,Rehman would churn out 30,000 sharpeners every day. “By evening the stock would be cleared out from our home and sold in the markets,” says Sultan. Their big day came in 1971 when the owner of Hindustan Pencil Pvt. Limited flew down from Mumbai to meet Rehman because he was impressed by the quality and durability of his sharpeners. “The previous day one of the company’s labourers had sharpened 300 pencils with one of our sharpeners,” explains Sultan. After the meeting,Rehman bagged a two-year contract with the company for the distribution of their brand ‘Sultan Pencil Sharpeners’ across India. Now they own four different brands.

Sultan,a school dropout,joined the business to assist his father in the ’70s. This was when competition was emerging and by 1977 there were five other sharpener makers in the country. So in 1981 they sold their hand moulding machines and bought an automatic one for Rs 27,000—it now comes for Rs 4.5 lakh.

Till 2004 business was thriving and they manufactured over one lakh sharpeners a day. “But since Chinese goods have flooded the market,our sales have been hit,” says Sultan,who suffered a paralysis attack two years ago.

His youngest brother,Mohammed Ehsan,37,now handles the family business,making 50,000-60,000 sharpeners everyday. “Demand is low. So we are now providing sharpeners for geometry boxes and other brands,” says Ehsan,hoping one of his three sons will join the family tradition of making sharpeners.

Mohd Sultan: 9811165725