Dr. Brij Kothari is famous for his  invention of Same Language Subtitling on Indian TV for mass literacy in India. An alumnus of IIT Kanpur, and a Ph.d holder from Cornell University, he is a social entrepreneur and an academic. He has also been on the Faculty of the Indian Institute of Management, Ahmedabad as Associate and Adjunct Professor, since 1996.
To push literacy rate in India, he  has made many attempts to persuade Doordarshan to allow him to subtitle film songs on TV. Each time his idea has been rejected. In 1999, a new director at the Ahmedabad Kendra agreed to experiment with subtitles on four episodes of the Gujarati programme, Chitrageet. It created such a sensation that they continued it for a year. To pursue his vision, Kothari is the president of PlanetRead, a non-profit involved in furthering Same Language Subtitling throughout the world. He is also the founder of BookBox, a social venture that produces animated, read-along stories for children in languages such as English, Spanish, Mandarin, Hindi, and over 21 others. His work was also selected by the Google.org as one of the projects for funding.Some of the other awards conferred on Dr. Kothari are- Indian Social Entrepreneur of the Year, 2009,Schwab Foundation and UNDP Clinton Global Initiative 2009,Feature Winner, Development Marketplace, Global innovation competition – World Bank and Tech Laureate (Education), The Tech Awards – 2003,  Ashoka Fellow, Stanford/Reuters Digital Vision Fellow