Sandhya and Sukanya Rao are the Founders of Wikiwear.
Sandhya Rao is an entrepreneur and founder of startup venture, Wikiwear™, that is developing a portfolio of branded apparel. She is also the co-founder of a connected health venture, RedMed Health Systems, with her husband, Jay Srinivasan. She is a qualified engineer from Bangalore University and has been in the apparel industry for over 20 years servicing both the export and domestic markets.
Sandhya is one of the founder members of the Bangalore Chapter of ALL Ladies League, an international organisation of women and is the South India chairperson of the ALL Start-ups Support group.
She is actively involved with NGOs such as Chiguru, which works for girl-child, and the India Literacy Project (ILP), a non-profit, volunteer organization, dedicated to spreading the cause of literacy in India.
Sandhya is a classical Kathak dancer and a disciple of Guru Smt. Vijaya Marthanda, founder-director Layalasya. She is currently also learning to play the violin from Guru Shri. N Ventakesh, who is one of the few people who plays the seven stringed version of the instrument. In her spare time, when she manages to find it, she also dabbles with theater and costume styling for the movies.
Sukanya Rao holds a Master’s degree in Mathematics from Bangalore University, a diploma in interior designing from Jenson & Nicolson ,a diploma in the Japanese rrt of Ikebana and training in entrepreneurship development from the Indian Institute of Management , Bangalore. She also has training in Early Childhood Education .
While Sukanya started off in the field of healthcare in the late 1990s ,she quickly moved to interior designing where she spent around 3 years managing projects for clients in hospitality and healthcare before she diversified to the field of cost auditing working with her father in his accounting firm Rao , Murthy & Associates. She pursued auditing as a career for about 10 years during which she developed deep knowledge of costing practices and worked with clients in varied industries.
Very inquisitive by nature and wanting to avoid run-of-the-mill career options, she later decided to set up her own venture to develop cereal protein bars during which time she worked closely with the Central Food Technology Research Institute for about 2 years. Subsequently, Sukanya to set up her own pre-school in 2009 as a franchisee to the Little Crest chain of Schools . After successfully running the institution for two years she sold her venture to the franchisers and focused on art with a Passion.
She has since pursued advanced courses in art with painting as a specialization at the Ken School of Art, MTV Acharya School of Art and later at Karnataka Chitrakala Parishad(KCKP). She has exhibited her work at KCKP and Bharatiya Vidya Bhavan in Bangalore. She is currently associated with Wikiwear Inc , in building their line of fashionable yoga wear and headgear.