Team
Lakkumanan Ramu
CEO & Marketing Strategy Head Europe
Lakkumanan Ramu is our Chief Executive Officer and Marketing Strategy Head for Europe. Lakku has a master's degree in Sustainable Energy Technologies from The Netherlands. He brings more than 15 years of international experience across Asia, Europe, and America in world leading companies such TATA, GE, BOEING, SIEMENS, ALTRAN, Capgemini and ASML. He has held several high-level positions in these companies such as Advanced Consultant, Lead System Architect, and Project Manager.
Having connected with his roots in rural India, he has always been passionate about social entrepreneurship in farming and cattle management. To fulfill his passion over several years he has connected dots and brought several team members together to co-found RuralDotz.
Ramnath Yadav
CFO & Head Marketing strategy
Ramnath Yadav is our Chief Finance Officer, he also heads our global Marketing strategies. Ramanth brings more than 16 years of organizational leading experience. He owns several world’s leading solar technology brands such as Unik Power and BENSERA. While working on solar pumps for farmers, agro-tech based social entrepreneurship has a special place in his heart. He is a true ambassador when it comes to building indigenous products. Some of the products his companies have successfully manufactured are Dual and Single axis Sun tracker for solar power plants, aluminium sections, and mounting structures for Solar modules.
Arunkumar Arumugam
COO & Operation Head North India
Arunkumar Arumugam is our Chief Operating Officer and Head of North India operations. By Profession, he is a virtual simulation, and engineering automation specialist. Arun is a social entrepreneur, currently living in Pune, Maharashtra, India. He has more than 13 years of experience with leading technical automotive simulation projects such as virtual validation automotive systems, physical validation, and digitalization of industrial processes in India.
Arunkumar has worked on solar, eMobility, digitalization of automotive process. He is currently working to provide the efficient solution for agricultural farming technologies, prediction of crop yield, and failure leveraging Artificial Intelligence/Machine Learning approaches & IoT projects for automotive and agricultural domain.
Dr. Ramavtar Tyagi
CTO & Head North America Operations
Dr. Ramavtar Tyagi is a sustainable energy technologist and social entrepreneur, currently living in Kitchener, Canada. He has a PhD in Mechanical Engineering which focused on Lithium-ion batteries from McMaster University, Canada. He has more than 10 years of experience with leading technical companies such as Litens Automotive, REEP Green Solutions, IBIS Power, AVL, SIEMENS, ASML, BHEL & JK Tyre in India, The Netherlands and Canada.
Dr. Tyagi has a Masters in Sustainable Energy Technologies and most of his research work is focused on wind, solar, biomass, biofuel, hydrogen, and lithium-ion battery technologies. In the last 5 years, he has been the champion of sustainable living solutions, currently working on several multi-layer farming, rainwater harvesting, and off-grid infrastructure projects. He is our Chief Technology Officer and head our North American operations.
Dr. Saravanan Kandasami
Chief Scientist & Technical Advisor
Dr. Saravanan Kandasami is a chief scientist and technical advisor at RURAL Dotz. His life-long north star is to reverse the declining farmers' livelihood through organic, ecofriendly, and sustainable agro-interventions. Before reinventing himself as a social entrepreneur, he has served multiple roles as Assistant Professor, Scientist and Extension worker for almost two decades in the fields of Soil Science, Agricultural Chemistry and Environmental Science for the governments of Tamil Nadu and Puducherry in India. Most of his scientific research and teaching has focused on assessing and improving soil, water and crop quality.
He is a trained expertise in organic cultivation and processing of Moringa as evolved during the last 5 years as a farmer and processor. He monitors and guides the agronomic practices followed by our organic moringa farmers and appraises the quality of every produce we get from the farmers. He trains our farmers on maintaining product purity and hygiene at both levels of production and processing.
He has also developed improved and farmer friendly technologies in cultivation and processing of moringa - 'Efficient crop residue mulching techniques' and 'modified solar tunnel to facilitate shade drying' - to name a few. Dr. Saravanan K is a pioneer in the Moringa field, who has been awarded with 'Progressive Moringa Farmer award' during the international conference on Moringa held during 2021 in India by International Moringa Research Organization (IMRO). In June 2022, he was chosen as the team leader for preparation of detailed project report to develop Moringa Export Zone for the Government of Tamil Nadu, India. He is now associated as a technical consultant in few other national and international projects on Moringa.
Moringa leaf farmer documentary: https://youtu.be/rz39zXBBMzc
Bastin Raj
EXIM Expert
Bastin Raj is an international export-import (EXIM) expert, having presence in 12+ countries. He is the founder of Thiraviam International, an emerging export leader in Tamil Nadu. He has been recognised with the Export Achiever Award by the government of Tamil Nadu on several occasions for his work in the EXIM industry.
Before starting Thiraviam, he has several years of corporate marketing experience, and a post graduation diploma in management and marketing. Bastin has done his engineering in Computer Science, allowing him to easily incorporate modern technology in his business ventures. It is his passion to empower farmers by providing fair market value for their produce leveraging his expertise in international marketing. This has led him to become one of the pioneers in the EXIM industry.
We feel privileged to have him as our EXIM expert at RURAL Dotz.
Award speech: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v0TjqjBZK2U
Ajai Karthick A
Strategy Consultant
Ajai Karthick leads the Strategy, Product Development and Innovation at Rural Dotz. Ajai has a bachelor’s degree in Engineering and about 19 years of experience in Product, Solution Design and Creation of IT Software and Product Implementation for top tier Insurance clients across the US.
As someone who has had a liking to eat cleaner, greener food, having been exposed to a variety of processed foods in the US, Ajai is very passionate about making the same available to people around and creating social impact. This connected him to Rural Dotz when his college hostel roommate Lakku when he approached. It culminated in a journey that has made steady strides for Rural Dotz.
In his pastime, Ajai involves involved in Gardening. He has a garden that produces vegetables, herbs, greens among others during Summer which he also updates in his Insta - https://www.instagram.com/hitjay2002
Ajai is also a quick learner, fast adapter which makes him highly suitable for this role