Alex Velez & Nikhil Arora: Back to the Roots
Back to the Roots (BTTR) was founded in 2009 by Alejandro Velez and Nikhil Arora as a 100% sustainable urban mushroom farm. It has transformed into a unique company focused on bringing sustainable grow-at-home products into households across the country. Their vision is to serve as a standard bearer of innovation and responsibility in their community in order to inspire others to work towards a more sustainable future.
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ABOUT Alex Velez & Nikhil Arora
“Nikhil Arora: Prior to founding Back to the Roots in 2009, Nikhil spent time involved in business development and operations advisory.
He also spent nearly six months in 2007 studying and working at the University of Ghana, Legon to setup a campus-wide recycling programme for the 30,000-person campus.
Since co-founding ‘Back to the Roots’ Nikhil has been named one of BusinessWeek’s Top 25 Entrepreneurs under 25, one of the Top 25 Social Entrepreneurs in America, UCLA’s Opportunity Green Top 25 Green Company Leaders, 2010 Social Venture Network Social Innovation winners, and 2010 Hitachi Young Entrepreneur Winners. Nikhil also currently serves on the Board of Directors of the Sage Mentorship Project.
Alejandro Velez: In addition to founding a 1000+ member non-profit & largest student-run organisation at CAL, The Sage Mentorship Project, Inc., Alejandro spent time in investment banking and business development with Morgan Stanley and Qualcomm.
Alex is a graduate of UC Berkeley’s Haas School of Business with a degree in business administration and a minor in education. Alex is originally from Medellin, Colombia and is also a proud Hodgkin’s Lymphoma cancer survivor.”
The VIDEO
