About Nikhil Arora
Nikhil Arora co-founded Back to the Roots (Oakland, CA) in 2009 as a senior at UC Berkeley and gave up a potential career in consulting to become an urban mushroom farmer. Nikhil oversees the marketing and product development half of the business and along with his co-founder, Alejandro Velez, has led the company to triple digit annual growth over the last four years. The company now distributes their two award-winning products, the Mushroom Kit and the AquaFarm, a self-cleaning fish tank that grows food, in over 2500 retailers nationwide including Whole Foods and Nordstrom. Back to the Roots was named as one of Forbes 25 Most Innovative Consumer Brands in 2013.
Since co-founding Back to the Roots, Nikhil has received a handful of awards including recognition by the White House for innovation and being named to Forbes 30 Under 30, Inc.’s 30 Under 30, BusinessWeek’s Top 25 Entrepreneurs under 25 and Top 25 Social Entrepreneurs in America. Nikhil also currently serves on the Board of Directors of the Sage Mentorship Project, and Social Venture Network.
Nikhil Arora received his undergraduate degree from UC Berkeley where he double majored in Political Science and Business Administration (Haas School of Business) and spent 6 months studying at the University of Ghana, Legon. Also, you’ll know Nikhil’s controlling the music in the office when you hear a constant flow of reggae and hip hop and the same song is played on repeat for an entire day!
