Padmashree Doctor PR Krishna Kumar (born 23 september 1951) is the son of Arya Vaidyan P. V. Rama Varier, the founder of Arya Vaidya Pharmacy. After studying Ayurveda at the college in Shornur, Kerala he took up preservation and promotion of Ayurveda as his life's mission. As the head of The Arya Vaidya Pharmacy, a premier ayurvedic institution in the country, he is involved in production of quality medicines, promotion of Ayurvedic education, research and clinical services. He was instrumental in taking the flagship company, started in a humble way, to the current status of the second best traditional house in the South. Arya Vaidya Pharmacy now manufactures around 450 products in two GMP certified factories. The state-of-the art new factory was inaugurated on 15th December 2008 satisfies WHO GMP norms and US FDA norms.
He initiated the first ever clinical research in traditional medicines under WHO and ICMR partnership in 1977 to study the efficacy of Ayurvedic treatment on Rheumatoid arthritis. Under the leadership of PR Krishna Kumar, AVTAR successfully completed the implementation of the first ever National Institute of Health, USA funded research project to scientifically evaluate Ayurveda outside the United States. This study was done in collaboration with the University of Washington, Seattle and University of California, Los Angeles and compared the efficacy of classical Ayurvedic treatment in rheumatoid arthritis against standard allopathic treatment. He conceived and implemented a unique 7 years educational program for Ayurveda totally free, affiliated to Madras University and later to Bharathiar University and also approved by the Central Council for Indian Medicine (CCIM), which created a unique breed of Ayurveda scholars. Krishna Kumar successfully implemented a number of projects on various areas related to Ayurveda, approved by Department of Science and Technology and Department of Environment on various topics related to Ayurveda. He executed creditably a DOE (Dept. of environments) funded, All India Coordinated Project on Ethnobiology of Tribals of Western Ghats (1985-88). This was thereafter relocated in the spacious land adjoining AVP- Factory, Kanjikode(Kerala) to establish a full-fledged modern Medplant Garden and to implement a DST project (Med-plant entrepreneurship Training) and also to initiate participation in a prestigious International RET plants conservation a DANIDA project.
Read more at “A true plural being – A life profile of P. R. Krishna Kumar “- published on Journal of Ayurveda and Integrative Medicine http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3121251/