Born in an agriculture family background, Sowmya has been a rustic person since her childhood observing, learning, working and growing up in her family farm based out of Erode in Tamil Nadu. She did her under-graduation in Information technology and worked with TCS for couple of years. Starting to volunteer with NGOs then, she realized her strong love to work for grassroots level communities with specific focus on agriculture sector. With strong passion to work for people and planet, Sowmya did her Masters in Social Work – Livelihoods and Social Entrepreneurship from Tata Institute of Social Sciences (TISS), Mumbai. She excelled highly in academics bagging all the awards during her academic stint. With five plus years of experience working with farming communities across India from the central himalayas to coastal south on sustainable livelihood and climate change, Sowmya founded HOOGA SEED KEEPERS COLLECTIVE, a social enterprise majorly focused on native seed keeping effort as a collective effort with farmers, gardeners and food growers to conserve what is endangered and forage for what is extinct. Sowmya focuses on experimenting with climate resilient native varieties of heirloom seeds, supporting small farmers – educating and creating awareness about native seeds and regenerative farming. She is a passionate community worker, seed nerd and sustainable business research consultant. She is very keen on contributing to the global ‘grow your own food’ movement to ensure food security, combat climate change and seed sovereignty.

On a sabbatical after working in the Pharma sector for over 6 years, a life skills workshop shifted her worldview and turned out to be a game changer on her life journey. She has been inspired by sustainable lifestyle practices ever since and the environmental crisis that we are facing deeply concerns her. She believes in leading by example and practises an almost zero waste lifestyle, veganism and kitchen gardening. She has experience facilitating waste segregation and recycling curriculums for kids , composting workshops and has also worked with an NGO on end to end waste management. Over the past year, her time was mostly spent volunteering on community farms in South India.

Karthik is a maker , creative artist, food enthusiast – loves to explore fermented foods. He is also an urban gardener, passionate about value addition in agriculture produce and making eco-friendly products. Karthik actively facilitates work with farmers, urban gardeners for workshops of HOOGA and plays an important role in creating awareness amongst those who are growing food on native heirloom varieties of seeds.

At the Outset, Keshav, A Bcom CS Grad, with 4+ years of corporate experience in various roles. With all positivity and spirit, I have been working on building and enhancing a career and journey that suits my health ailments .A Spirited Soul, Former Customer Relationship Officer and Educational Counselor by profession and a Voice Artist and Motivational Speaker and Podcast Coach by Passion. An energetic and Budding Entrepreneur, for the Motivational HUB Called “The ANJAS MINDCAST “

Very passionate about forest, wildlife and biodiversity conservation, Mr Nandha is actively supporting work with communities on seed keeping of native tree species. Mr Nandha runs Biodiversity Conservation Trust and with ten plus years of experience in living in forest, learning about nature and wildlife, Mr Nandha believes strongly in native species of plants and trees as the core for living beings. He is also an environmentalist and talks more on creating awareness on issues that harms our mother earth.