Dr. Habil Narahari Rao is also the founder of the Sri Vagdevi Vidyaa Pratisthana or Vagdevi Educational Trust, a trust to support research on cultural and educational issues in India. Born in 1946 in Mangalore, India, he had his Graduation in 1968 in Chemistry and Botany from the Karnataka University, Dharwar and obtained his Masters-degree (with distinction) in Philosophy in 1971 from the University of Mysore. There, he was also awarded a Government of India UGC Research Fellowship for doctoral studies. 

He came to Europe in 1979, first to Paris and then to Saarbrücken in Germany. In 1991 he obtained his doctorate in Philosophy (with distinction, ‘summa cum laude’), and did the habilitation (a post-doctoral degree specific to Universities in Central Europe) in 1997, both at the Universität des Saarlandes, Germany. He worked as Privatdozent (Adj. Professor) at the Universität des Saarlandes, participating as teacher in two DFG supported Interdisciplinary Graduierten Kolleges (the Research groups), one on Intercultural communication and another on Cognitive science. During this period he was also a regular participant in the activities of Archives H.Poincare`, Universite de Lorraine, Nancy, France. Later he worked for a semester each as a Visiting Professor at two universities, Kanpur (Indian Institute of Technology) and Lille (France).