Brij Kothari (Managing Trustee)

Dr. Brij Kothari (Cornell University) and his team have innovated, researched, and nationalized the use of “Same Language Subtitling” (SLS) on Bollywood film songs on TV, for mass literacy in India. He laid the foundation for the SLS project as an Associate Professor at the Indian Institute of Management, Ahmedabad (IIMA) in its Centre for Educational Innovation.

Brij is an Ashoka Fellow and the President of PlanetRead, a non-profit involved in scaling SLS efforts in India and other countries. He is also the CEO of BookBox Inc, a for-profit social venture producing children’s animated stories in more than 25 languages. He co-founded PlanetRead.org and BookBox.com as a Reuters Digital Vision Fellow at Stanford University.

Brij grew up in the Sri Aurobindo Ashram at Pondicherry and went on to get a Masters in Physics at IIT Kanpur, a Masters in Development Communication and a Ph.D. in Education from Cornell University. His doctoral research was on the conservation of local knowledge in Andean Ecuador.

Chitra Shah (Trustee)

An MSW and a Gold medalist from Madras school of Social work, Chitra is passionate about changing lives of the people with disabilities (PWDs). She has over 15 years of experience in the field of disability. Her research interest includes:Psychosocial conditions of families of CWSNs, Women & disability and Sexuality& Disability. She is also part of various government committees such as:

•National Action and Coordination Group (NACG) Puducherry, Children with Disability, Child rights & abuse

•NGO Member, Committee for shelter for urban homeless

•Member – State Advisory Council – RTE ACT (Right for Education)

•NGO representative for Puducherry – PM’s BETI BACHAO BETI PADAO Programme.

She is the Founder & Director of Satya Special School, a center for children with Intellectual disabilities. Satya Special School caters to about 950 children. Satyahas the great honor to be considered one of the outstanding non-profit organizations by Bank of America. Some of the awards that Satya won are Best Institution, by the Government of Puducherry in 2018 and World Cerebral Palsy Award for the innovative Mobile Therapy Unit.

Akshaya Vijayalakshmi (Advisor)

Akshaya Vijayalakshmi (Ph.D., Iowa State University) is an Associate Professor of Marketing at the Indian Institute of Management Ahmedabad, India. Her research interests broadly lie in the intersection of advertising, media, and gender. Her work has implications for the field of marketing and public policy.

Akshaya was the co-chair of the Asia Pacific Association for Consumer Research 2019 Conference. Her research papers have appeared in the Journal of Advertising (won the 2020 best paper award), Journal of Marketing Communications, Journal of Marketing Management, Journal of Consumer Affairs and others. She has won international and national grants to pursue her research.

Akshaya continuously attempts to make her research accessible by writing for the public in mass media outlets and has published in the World Advertising Research Centre, Forbes, and Wall Street Journal (Asia), amongst others.

Ankur Sarin (Advisor)

Ankur Sarin is currently an Associate Professor at the Indian Institute of Management, Ahmedabad (IIMA). He is a member of the Institute\'s Public Systems Group (PSG) and has a PhD in Public Policy from the University of Chicago. Prior to joining IIM-Ahmedabad, was a Researcher at Mathematica Policy Research, Princeton.

With an underlying interest in inequalities and the methodology of action research, Ankur has experience working with several aspects of India’s public systems including education, e-governance, urban governance and public health. He has been on the boards of for-profit as well as non-profit organizations and has worked collaboratively with partners like UNICEF, Pratham, RCRC (a network of over 85 rural focused NGOs), Central Square Foundation and Education Development Trust.

He has a Ph.D. in Public Policy from the University of Chicago and was a Researcher at Mathematica Policy Research, Princeton.

Sanea Vakaliya (Advisor)

Sanea Vakaliya has been leading the finance, legal and compliance function at CIIE Initiatives , INFUSE Ventures , Bharat Inclusion Seed Fund and Bharat Innovation Fund . Her varied experience includes setting up and leading end to end finance and legal function of the Venture Capital Fund and Incubator, handling due diligence (legal and finance) of the proposed investments, finalizing investment documents, managing exits, advising startups and other startup ecosystem players in the field of her expertise.

Prior to joining CIIE, she was the co-founder of an event management company from which she exited. She has also worked with an audit firm as a Senior Auditor and headed a primary school located in a village. Her formal education includes Bachelor of Legislative Law, Company Secretary Degree, and Master in commerce specializing in cost accounting & audit, and a Bachelor’s degree in commerce and education.

Tathagata Bandyopadhyay (Advisor)

Tathagata Bandyopadhyay has been into the teaching and research of statistics for the last four decades. He joined the department of statistics, University of Calcutta, India as a lecturer in the year 1984. He was there until 2005. During this period, he visited numerous universities abroad to teach and do collaborative research.

In 2005, he joined IIM Ahmedabad as a faculty and retired in October, 2021 as the Dean (Faculty). His stint at IIM Ahmedabad, gave him an opportunity to collaborate with researchers working in other disciplines. From 2008, he started collaborating with Dr. Brij Kothari on the Same Language Subtitling (SLS) project. Their research proved beyond doubt that a long term exposure to SLS helps in enhancing the reading ability of the semi-literate by giving them a regular reading practice.

Currently, he is a distinguished professor at the Dhirubhai Ambani Institute of Information and Communication Technology, Gandhinagar, Gujarat, India.

Vidya Vemireddy (Advisor)

Dr. Vidya Vemireddy Assistant Professor, Centre for Management in Agriculture, IIM Ahmedabad

Before joining IIMA in 2019, Vidya Vemireddy received her doctoral degree in Applied Economics and Management from the Cornell University, USA. During her Ph.D., she has been and continues to be an affiliated researcher with the Tata-Cornell Institute for Agriculture and Nutrition (TCI), Cornell University.

She has conducted various research and consulting projects with agencies such Consultative Group for International Agricultural Research (CGIAR, Ministry of Agriculture and Farmers Welfare (GoI), TARINA (Technical Assistance and Research for Indian Nutrition and Agriculture); Population Council, IIM- Ahmedabad, India, Cornell University and Boston University.

She has published her research in reputed international journals such as Global Food Security, Food Policy, Food Security and has contributed to columns in CGIAR platforms. Her teaching and research lie in gender, agriculture, nutrition, food systems transformation, sustainable agriculture, and agricultural finance.

Dhanalakshmi

K.Dhanalakshmi Graduated with M.tech (Wireless Communication) from Pondicherry Technical University and MBA (HRM) from Pondicherry University. She has Hands on Experience in Human Resource Management for past 3 years, she joined the team in March 2023 as a HR & Project Coordinator. Her main responsibilities include HR Activities, Quality and Language Resource Coordinator.

Vasanthakumar Chinnasamy

Vasanthakumar Chinnasamy joined PlanetRead as Accounts Officer and has 9+ years of working experience in multiple industries including, Auditing Services, Outsourcing and Consultancy. He holds a Master’s degree in Business Administration

Rajesh

Rajesh joined PlanetRead in 2015 as a Flash Animator. He has a postgraduate degree in Electronic Media from the Pondicherry University. He is proficient in using Adobe Photoshop and Animate with hands-on experience creating 2D animated videos.

Regis

He joined PlanetRead in August 2006 as a junior editor and a flash animator. He has a BCA from St. Joseph Arts and Science College, Cuddalore, India to his credit and prior to joining PlanetRead he worked for a year in a multinational e-publishing unit as a graphics artist.

Santosh Jadhav

Santosh Jadhav has been part of PlanetRead from June 2004. He works in Video editing and is responsible for all SLS work. He has done Diploma in Journalism.

His hobbies include painting, writing, reading, travelling and film direction. He has directed a feature film and also multiple short films.

Swapnil Jadhav

He has also been with PlanetRead since September 2005. He is an editor and works closely with Santosh for all the SLS work. He has done a diploma in Film Editing.

Vivek

Vivek joined PlanetRead in May 2022 as an Animator and SLS Editor.

He has completed Diploma in Animation & Visual Effects in Akash Academy and Diploma in Visual Communication in Bridge Academy in Pondicherry.

Arvind Kumar

He is part of R&D team in the Puducherry office. He has finished Engineering in Information Technology. Initially, he worked on Flash Automation and then moved on to NLE Automation and Research. He is currently developing custom automation applications with the DotNet Framework and lends his hands in other research activities.