Ashutosh Sharma is a second year student of PGDM course at Indian Institute of Management, Ahmedabad. During one of the first year course (ISPE), everybody was asked to think of idea for new product or services or improvement in existing product or services or utopia. This is when the idea of a modified matchstick struck the mind of Ashutosh. He received appreciation from his classmates for this idea.

Most of us having used match sticks for igniting fire for one or the other purpose have realized that more than three-fourth of the match stick goes waste after we extinguish the fire. However, this waste, colossal as it is triggered a thought in the mind of a first-year post-graduate student of IIM-A. As a part of a course (ISPE), every student is asked to come out with a new idea for product or service or think of an improvement in existing product and services. Mr. Ashutosh thought about the fact that hardly one-fourth of the matchstick near its head was consumed. He proposed an idea of a match box which will have the sticks of one-third size, popping out of the match box when pressed and held by a match stick holder for the ease of lighting.

It is in creditable that the same very idea was further modified by three students (Sankalp Upadhyay, Gaurav Gupta, Kunal Singh) next year who suggested several modifications such as having a slightly longer stick with inflammable head on both the sides of the stick, or having a bar-be-cue kind of a stick. With inflammable powder attached at three or four points on stick depending upon the length. It shows how simple ideas can be improvised through individual or collective creativity saving cost, effort and contributing to environmental conservatio