Reborn In 17th century India with Black Technology

February

Akhand Bharatiya Empire

Vijay eventually returned to the capital after inspecting all the large-scale mass-production technologies invented by the five research teams. There was excitement on Vijay’s face as he immediately wanted to kickstart the chemical revolution in the empire.

In the meantime, the research team leaders Arjun Patel, Ravi Sharma, Siddharth Desai, Anil Kumar, and Vikram Singh had all gathered and were celebrating their success with a banquet.

They were overjoyed not only because His Majesty had fulfilled his promise and rewarded them greatly, but also because they had just received a notice after His Majesty left that all five team leaders were already qualified to receive the nobility rank of Yodha. Although the class is still at Yodha Class 3, the lowest of nobility, they were still happy nonetheless.

Once you enter the nobility system, accumulation is enough to reach a higher class of nobility within the same rank.

Given that the team leaders are only in their middle ages, there is a very good chance for all five of them to reach rank 1 Yodha by the end of their careers.

And within this, if they are lucky enough to make another great invention, there is a great chance they could reach the higher Rank of Mantri or If brilliant enough even a Maha Mantri, only achieved by the best of the best scientists in the empire, like Professor Venudas Kumar, Sir Ganapatra Pillai, or Mr. Chaitanya.

The rank of nobility, which shows the influence and legacy of a person, is more important to the team leaders than what money could bring.

As for the research assistants and interns, even though they were not able to obtain enough merit to earn their rank of nobility, they were overjoyed with the current result. The main assistant researchers had already received multiple ranks of promotion, and they even received their appointment letters.

The assistant researchers, who were mostly assistant professors or assistant interns in their respective organizations, suddenly not only became senior professors or senior researchers, but some of them even became managing directors of the departments they used to work in.

This all happened because when Vijay put forward the research task, he extended it to all universities, research organizations, medical institutes, and medical colleges throughout the empire. Therefore, all the top professors, being proud of their own abilities, did not want to join hands with other professors of their calibre.

This left them with relatively inexperienced but theoretically brilliant assistant professors or intern researchers to choose from as team members.

So, after the research concluded and within the five teams that succeeded, many assistant researchers rose in their ranks, gaining positions they could only have hoped for before the project.

As for the interns of the project group, who were students from various BIT universities or medical universities, the benefits they obtained were not low either. As soon as the project they participated in was successful, they immediately received dozens of offers from various government departments, offering high salaries to recruit them.

Not only that, Raya Royal Bank granted a loan of 5,000 Varaha, i.e., 170 grams of gold or 900,000 INR, as a no-interest long-term loan for the interns who participated and were successful in the research of three acids and two bases, in order to start their own companies.

Although their benefits were lower than those of their mentors, who were granted a credit line of 7,000 Varaha, and project leaders, who received a credit line of 10,000 Varaha, (238 grams or 1,030,000 INR, and 340 grams or 1,080,000 INR, respectively in today’s money, not accounting for inflation), the interns were still very excited because, unlike their mentors and project leaders, they were young and full of entrepreneurial spirit.

Among the 130 student interns who participated in successful projects from the five research groups, 40 interns chose to accept the credit line and start a company with the money. One might ask, if only 40 interns, or 30.7% of the total, are accepted, how is this benefit from Raya Royal Bank useful?

However, one has to consider that these interns did not start businesses alone; they joined hands with familiar interns within their own group and brought in outside people to help manage the companies, or even invited their mentors from the same research group to form companies together.

So, although on paper only 30% of the 130 interns started their own companies, the involvement of the interns across these companies has reached a staggering 85%.

Only around 20 people out of the 130 did not choose to join any private company or start their own; instead, they took the route of joining the Bharatiya Academy of Sciences as full-time researchers, which was another viable option for all of them.

In the month of March alone, forty-five new chemical industries were set up, all connected in some way or another to the teams that succeeded in R&D.

The 45 chemical industries, already familiar with mass production of their respective chemicals, began to produce derivative products from the said chemicals.

Among these chemical industries, Raya Chemicals was also present, a heavy industry under the banner of the Raya Group of Companies.

Vijay was successful in poaching one of the five leaders of the research group, Anil Kumar, as the director of Raya Chemicals. The task was not too hard because Anil Kumar had previously worked for the Raya Research Group in the field of medicine, so he did not have much to consider, as Anil always had his priorities straight to serve the Raya family.

Within a matter of weeks, the patent licenses for development and further research for sulfuric acid, hydrochloric acid, nitric acid, sodium hydroxide, and calcium hydroxide were obtained by Raya Chemicals from the 4 different institutions of Bharatiya Academy of civilian sciences, Bharatiya Academy of military sciences, Bharatiya Institute of Technology, and Bharatiya Medical University.

Since the research funding for the projects had come directly from the government and the Ministry of Education, more than 80% of the patent rights were in the hands of the institutes that funded the specific project among the five successful research teams, while the remaining 20% was shared among the research participants according to their contributions.

The Bharatiya Academy of Civilian Sciences held the patent rights for the mass production of sulfuric acid using the Patel lead Chamber Process. The Bharatiya Academy of Military Sciences held the patent rights for the mass production of hydrochloric acid and nitric acid using Sharma’s Direct Synthesis Method and the Desai-Mehta Distillation Method.

Raya Research Institute held the patent rights for the mass production of sodium hydroxide using the Anil Process. Finally, an alliance of BIT universities, centred around BIT Bhubaneswar, held the patent rights for the mass production of calcium hydroxide using Vikram’s Lime Kiln Process.

The process of obtaining all the patent rights from these organizations was a tedious one, but fortunately, being an emperor had its perks.

Vijay suggested a function for the patent office: "Put up a large board in the patent office, and on this board, display all the patents and their details that are up for licensing or sale."

"List the price that is being asked by the patent holder. Also, if the price has to be determined through negotiation, allow the patent holder to employ an agent. Let this agent be stationed in the patent office. This agent will be responsible for negotiating with the buyer. If the buyer wishes, he could employ an agent of his own.

Let the agents representing the buyer and seller negotiate together and finalize the deal as efficiently as possible."

With this suggestion made by Vijay, a large board was placed in various patent offices all over the empire, displaying patents for sale and licensing. Consequently, as a result of his majesty’s decision, the patent offices began to construct conference rooms in order to provide a good environment for negotiations.

A new profession was born called patent agents. Patent agents, successful in obtaining as many benefits as possible for their clients, began to become sought after. n/ô/vel/b//jn dot c//om

With the implementation of this new system, companies or individuals looking to buy or license a patent or sell a patent no longer had to go anywhere; the patent office had become the patent marketplace.

The patent office, which was once only a small room within the Panchayat of various cities, started to move out of this small room and began to build its own office headquarters.

With the implementation of this new feature, the patent office, which could only make modest profits by providing convenience to the public, was now generating significant profits by renting out conference rooms for negotiations, taking a small cut for renting out their rooms, taking another small cut to act as a witness and intermediary to legalize the deal, and finally leasing real estate for kitchens and other benefits to provide convenience for high-profile customers during negotiations.

Initially, this move did not cause much reaction from the public, as the change was seen only by the elites of society, namely the large business owners who recognized the benefits of convenience brought by the change in the patent office.

The small businesses and civilians did not have much interest in the changes that took place in the patent office since these changes had nothing to do with them. However, this all changed on a certain day in April when a small inventor who had created a rolling chair for office purposes was surprised to find that the patent office was nothing like before.

To Be Continued...