Varun Aggarwal
Varun is an engineer by training and alumnus of MIT, USA. He co-founded Aspiring Minds, India’s largest skill assessment company and sold it in 2019. He has been involved in several social initiatives including FAST to reform India’s science ecosystem, and Change Engine to accelerate entrepreneurs. He has written books on science, entrepreneurship, and also a fiction story on AI and society.
When he was in middle school, in an epiphany he realized that he did not know the answer to THE fundamental question: Who am I? This drew him to the Bhagavad Gita and lectures of Swami Vivekananda. Since then he has been an avid reader of Indian philosophical texts and also those in the puranic tradition. He produced a video to introduce Swami Vivekananda to the youth in 2010. While at MIT, he taught a zero-credit course on Hinduism during IAP and also organized lectures on Vedanta by experts at the institution.
Through myNachiketa books, he wants to introduce children to ideas of Upanishads and Bhagavad Gita. He believes there are many who have questions similar to his childhood questions and myNachiketa books can help them discover their own answers!
Avdhesh Vaid
Avdhesh Vaid is a semiconductor engineer by training. He only knew about the Bhakti and puranic literature in his young days. It was during the beginning of his professional life that he first got exposed to Vedantic ideas. This changed his whole thinking process about life and the world. Not only did it have a great intellectual impact, the ideas also led to him to live his life in a different and more meaningful way. Avdhesh since then has both thought deeply about Vedanta and practiced it in his day to day life. He loves to talk to children, coach and mentor people.
Our Reviewers
Our books have been reviewed by academic experts and those in the Hindu spiritual tradition.
Prof. Ankur Barua
Ankur is the Senior Lecturer in Hindu Studies in the Faculty of Divinity, University of Cambridge. He holds a PhD in theology and religious studies from the University of Cambridge. He is an expert in Vedāntic Hindu philosophical theology. He has reviewed many of our books including Bhagavad Gita for Kids and Discovering God.
Swami Medhananda
Swami Medhananda is a monk of the Ramakrishna mission and an academic philosopher, currently serving as Senior Research Fellow in Philosophy at the Vedanta Society of Southern California in Hollywood. He is Section Editor for the International Journal of Hindu Studies (Springer), overseeing submissions in Hindu and Cross-Cultural Philosophy of Religion. From 2010 to 2021, he was Associate Professor and Head of the Program in Philosophy at the Ramakrishna Mission Vivekananda Educational and Research Institute in Belur Math, West Bengal. He reviewed our book, Discovering God.