Sarbajit K Rakshit is an Application Architect at IBM who has 842 US patents (and counting) to his name. He hails from Kolkata, India, and has a mechanical engineering degree from the Indian Institute of Engineering, Science, and Technology.

In the beginning, the goal was just to have one patent to his name in order to impress his father, a mathematics teacher in Cooch Behar, West Bengal. Sadly, his father passed away before Sarbajit was awarded his first patent. But the desire stayed and led him to become a prolific inventor.

Today, Sarbajit has the highest patent per year record to his name. He has been awarded 842 US patents in the past 8 years, making his average patent per year count 105. 

Yes, 105! That’s almost 1 patent every 3 days of the year for the past 8 years. How cool is that? He was awarded 163 U.S. patents in 2019, the highest ever awarded to a citizen of India in a single year.

His Facebook post mentioned, “Excited to move forward and place my name nearer to Sir Thomas Alva Edison”. Edison holds 1084 patents to his name, and with Sarbajit’s current rate, it won’t be a surprise if he surpassed Edison in the next two years. 

So guys, the moral of the story is, sometimes you can end up sharing a list with Sir Thomas Alva Edison whilst trying to impress your parents. As Sir Edison said, “Necessity is the mother of invention”, but in Sarbajit’s case, it was his father.