Dr Padmanabha Kekunnaya, who has a PhD from Mangalore University in Linguistics, is currently working running a DTP business. His PhD titled ‘A Comparative Study of Tulu Dialects’ was written in 1991 and published by the Govinda Pai Research Centre in 1994 and won the best book award from the Tulu Karnataka Sahitya Academy in 1995. From 1982-1997, he was the assistant editor for the ‘Tulu Lexicon’ published the Govinda Pai Research Centre. His most recent publication is the ‘Tulu (Dravida) Cognate Dictionary’, brought out by Nitte University.