Wildlife photographer Ramki Sreenivasan passes away

An obituary

Ramki Sreenivasan, a tech entrepreneur-turned-wildlife photographer and conservationist, passed away in Bengaluru on Saturday night. He was 49 and is survived by his wife and son.

Ramki was diagnosed with cancer in 2017 and he managed to beat it. But the disease came back about five months ago.

A physics graduate who later studied MBA, Ramki founded Marketics, a data analytics company, and steered it to great success.

He eventually sold the company and took retirement at the age of 36 to pursue his childhood calling: birdwatching and photographing rare species.

Ramki was the founder of Conservation India, an NGO, and Wild Ventures, a digital archive of India’s natural heritage.

One of his pet projects was a programme to save amur falcons from mass hunting.

The project led to a ban on the hunting of amur falcons in Nagaland. Ramki also founded Wildlife for Cancer to help poor children affected by cancer.

“His passing away is a huge loss to the wildlife conservation community in India,” said ornithologist Shashank Dalvi, who had known Ramki for 20 years.

“We bumped into each other while watching birds in Arunachal Pradesh,” Dalvi said. “We covered the entire Northeast and the rest of the country.”