Why ṚTAVEDA Exists
From Raju & Uha, Founders
I'm Raju Kancharla, Founder of ṚTAVEDA, and this is Uha Kanakavalli, my Co-Founder, and my wife. I come from a Christian family, Uha from a devout Hindu one; ours was a love marriage across that difference, and it's shaped how we approach faith: with respect, not dogma. We're both software engineers by training, and before ṚTAVEDA I spent years building B2B products.
ṚTAVEDA began during the hardest two weeks of our lives. Uha was pregnant, and the baby wasn't attaching to the womb properly, so her doctor ordered strict bed rest for two weeks. I took leave to be with her, and in that stillness our conversations turned to Hindu spiritual traditions and the Gurus we'd both grown up hearing about. Like most people, I was curious about the future, and that curiosity led me to astrology.
We started reading astrology books together in that same room. What began as a distraction became a genuine fascination. The deeper I went, the more I realised how much real structure sits underneath it: no two birth charts are ever identical, not even between twins; the planetary effects always differ. That single fact changed how seriously I took the subject.
Over the following months I earned an Advanced Diploma in Jyotish Shastra from the Indian Institute of Skill Development, and kept learning the rest of the way through books and long nights of YouTube lectures that became, in effect, my virtual gurus. Slowly, I got good enough to read and predict charts with real confidence.
A couple of years later I looked at the astrology apps already out there, and most of what I found was troubling: people paying for remedies they didn't need, sold fear instead of clarity, with no way to actually understand their own chart. That's the gap ṚTAVEDA exists to close: a platform people can trust, that explains your chart to you in plain language through an AI Guru, instead of just telling you what to buy.
We wanted this to be free. The infrastructure behind it isn't, so for now there's a small ₹3 per message charge on AI Guru consultations, which is honestly still below what it costs us to run; ₹5 would cover it properly. It's a trade-off we're making consciously, not a business we're trying to maximize.
Longer term, our goal is bigger than a product: we want to teach Vedic astrology clearly enough that you can read your own chart and make your own decisions, instead of depending on any app, guru, or fear-based sales pitch, including ours.
If ṚTAVEDA has earned your trust, share it with your family and friends. That's what keeps us going.
Raju & Uha