Do you know my real name? It is

Kartheeba Kandeeba Kathirava Prasanna Deepan Chakravarthy

Yes, it is 6 words and 52 characters long. There is an interesting back story to this name. Our diety God name is ‘Kamatchi Amman’ and our family wants to name me with names starting with ‘Ka’.

Thus ‘Kartheeba’, ‘Kandeeba’, ‘Kathirava’ was born.

Some of our relatives want to name me differently without following the ‘Ka’ rule.

Thus ‘Prasanna’, ‘Deepan’ & ‘Chakravarthy’ was born.

There was a chaos among relatives on which name to finalise. In order to please all our relatives, my parents decided to combine all the names and named me as

Kartheeba Kandeeba Kathirava Prasanna Deepan Chakravarthy

My friends use to play tongue twister, memory game using my name. Looking back, it is so much fun now. My name story didn't end there.

I’m passionate about Cricket and I have noticed that all cricketers have two names (First Name & last Name). In order to make my name look stylish when I join the Indian Cricket team, I added ‘Raghul’ to it while studying 8th std.

And, I became ‘Kartheeba Kandeeba Kathirava Prasanna Raghul Deepan Chakravarthy’

When my parents approached school for my admission, the school told that this name is too big (Difficult to put in attendance in one row) and asked to shorten it.

That’s how I became ‘Kartheeban’.

After marriage, I decided to add my wife’s name to my name. (Check the full story here)

Finally, I’m Karthee Vidya now.

So, next time when you call me, what name are you going to call me by? 😂

I worked in Cognizant for 8 years. I’m passionate about Volunteering and my vision is to inspire every Indian to volunteer.

So, I quit my job 5 years back on Dec 31, 2014 and decided to do full time volunteering.

Today, Team Everest NGO works with 40,000+ children with the help of 15,000 volunteers. During these years, I have not got any salary and I managed my family with my savings and my wife’s salary.

There are many individuals like me who want to serve the society but not able to quit the job because of financial commitments. 

So, I decided to build a model to give confidence to such youngsters. This January 2020, after 5 years of quitting the job, I asked individuals to sponsor me. You can check the blog post here.

28 People agreed to sponsor me. And for the first time after 5 years, I have got my first salary on May 1st. It is completely sponsored by individuals who want to help me to continue doing social work. (If you wish to sponsor me, click here to whatsapp me or whatsapp me at +91 89399 12365.)

I want to give away 100% of this to people who are affected by Covid.  As I told, my vision is to promote volunteering in India and in the world.

So, I have chosen 50 kids and giving them this money. Each kid will choose one person who is affected because of Covid and will handover this money to them. I feel this is a wonderful way to teach kids about kindness, empathy and giving. I call this as a ‘Lets give challenge’.

If you have a child, ask them to give their piggy bank money as a donation to help covid affected families. They don’t have a piggy bank? No worries. You can give them some money and ask them to whom it can be donated? Once they choose a beneficiary, give that money to them.

If you do not know any beneficiary, donate to Team Everest Livelihood relief fund and we can donate it to a person in need. Click here to donate. 

It’s a great opportunity to teach ‘Giving’ to our children. Try it out now and share your conversation with your child as a video with a hasgtag #letsgivechallenge

Let’s start giving!

Note: If you wish to join as a volunteer, sign up here.