Joyful human endeavour creating regenerative systems for the wellbeing of community and biosphere.
Our Team
Jananee Mohan is a Permie with a design background from NIFT. She completed her Permaculture Design course with Rico Zook and Narsanna Koppula in January 2017, and her vision is to use design thinking to integrate non-linear small-scale self-sustaining systems that can transcend into larger patterns of community resilience.
She spent her formative years in her grandfather's farm, who was a self-taught natural farmer and used innovative ways to integrate the inputs and outputs of his farm . She shares the same kinship as him with soil and all the faunal and floral diversity of a farm. She also firmly believes in extending principles of permaculture to all aspects of one’s life to achieve holistic well-being of the planet.
Growing up in Bangalore all her life, her goals are to work with small groups of intelligent and sprightful communities in the city to transition into meeting their urban needs more holistically, and to drive permaculture thinking into mainstream consciousness.
Jananee Mohan
Kiri was born in England and moved with her mother and brother to India when she was four. She spent her formative years on a farm 100km from Bangalore and went to school in the city.
Upon completion of a bachelors in environmental social sciences at the University of Kent in England she moved back to India, first doing urban farming and gardening workshops in Mumbai, and since 2014 has been working on permaculture projects in and around Bangalore. She did her first Permaculture Design Course (PDC) with Rico Zook in 2014, and since has done another PDC with Narsanna Koppula as well as completed her Teacher Training in 2017 with Jude Hobbs.
Kirian Meili
Himanshu is a Permaculturist with a background in Sustainable Architecture and landscape design. In the last 8 years, his fields of work revolved around low cost architecture, landscape and water management. From there, Permaculture was only a natural progression.
He works on rainwater harvesting and wetland restoration on Bangalore's Urban Lakes with Biome and is a landscape designer for Afforestt.
He mostly enjoys working with sketches and quick on-ground, hands-on implementation.
Himanshu has lived in Bangalore all his life and sees it as his Zone 0. He feels responsible for its doing and undoing and dreams of bringing permaculture to its urban commons.
Himanshu Arteev
Nikhil has a diverse background ranging from his work as an advocate of the Bombay High Court for one of India’s foremost legal firms to flying planes commercially in India and abroad.
The pursuit of flying gave him an opportunity to study meteorology and keenly observe mechanisms of nature from the troposphere whilst soaring over an array of landscapes around the world. During court vacations, he volunteered at farms to get a better understanding of soil and food systems, when he was first introduced to Permaculture.
This led him to pursue a Permaculture Design Certificate Course taught by Rico Zook where he realized that the application of systems existing in nature (for eons), can have a significant positive impact to the manner in which we interact with one another and the environment.
At Ananas, his multi-disciplinary experience brings a unique perspective to the table. His goal is to guide people to positively influence their landscapes in an attempt to gain intergenerational resilience.
Nikhil Rodrigues
Sanjana is a permie with a Bachelor's degree in Architecture. She has spent her life in different parts of the country, in the journey gaining an appreciation for diversity in flora-fauna. This interest led to her first Permaculture Design Course with Rico Zook, Jyoti Deshpande and Ranjot Singh in January 2020.
The course was her first encounter with Whole Systems Thinking, leading to a shift in her perspective of design. This new design framework turned out to be one without boundaries, yet steered by logic. She is constantly amazed by the number of things it does not apply to - zero. She loves the logical integration of the nuances of regenerative design, and how every new bit of knowledge colours in and expands the whole picture.
Repurposing software tools used in architecture for a more free-thinking design ecosystem like permaculture is something Sanjana enjoys doing. She adores designing with Ananas for the melting pot of perspectives, the environment of collaboration, and the journey of using permaculture as a tool to restore natural spaces.
Sanjana Radhakrishnan
Theertha is an explorer, who is passionate about regenerative methods of design and keen to unlearn and learn. As a young architecture graduate, her interests shifted towards the Socio-environment sector early on. This change in perspective, brought upon during her internship at Auroville, took her to Rajasthan through the India Fellow Programme to work with an NGO in the forests of Ranthambhore.
Soon after working with the children in Sawai Madhopur and returning to home base in Bangalore, Theertha worked with Jalaposhan Trust, a citizen group that works with conserving Jakkur Lake (urban commons). Through her experience as lake manager at Jakkur Lake, she found her interest lies in the relationship of local communities and their role in the conservation of the environment. She also found herself awed by the intertwined relationships of flora & fauna with their habitats.
Theertha enjoys taking pictures of patterns & details observed of plants, insects, and life of all forms. She believes that it is important to continue to learn, and hopes to do so from all communities, permies, designers, wanderers through sharing knowledge and experiences.
Theertha Ravindran
Varun has an academic background in finance. While his previous work with tax laws did interest him, he always wanted to pursue his long-standing interest in geography, ecology and understanding the way in which natural systems work. Volunteering at a farm introduced him to permaculture and whole systems thinking, something that has potential to solve our food problems as well as contribute to our fight against climate change.
At Ananas, Varun loves using his numerical skills in planning water and other strategies and illustrating them using the new software skills he has learnt during his time here. He also particularly enjoys the opportunity of doing hands-on ground work that presents itself often, and also learning from the varied perspectives that people at Ananas bring to the table. Watching and observing barren landscapes slowly transform into productive ecosystems is what motivates him and gives him a sense of purpose.