Praveen Saanker
Praveen Saanker is the founder of Vedicology Advisors, a boutique advisory practice serving Indian UHNW families and family-owned enterprises. His work addresses the deeper human questions that wealth creates — about identity, purpose, succession, legacy, and what a family actually wants from its wealth — drawing on over two decades of senior financial experience, a doctorate in clinical psychology, deep expertise in India’s Vedic sciences, and the operational experience of having built and governed a functioning non-profit institution.
Every UHNW family has professionals managing its money. Bankers, chartered accountants, lawyers, and wealth managers handle portfolio allocation, tax structuring, legal compliance, and investment mandates. These functions are essential, and most families at a certain level of wealth are well served in this domain.
What most families do not have — and what almost no one in their existing advisory circle provides — is someone who works on the human beings holding the wealth. Someone equipped to sit with a patriarch who has built a multi-thousand-crore enterprise and ask: what do you actually want from the next chapter of your life? Or to work with a 28-year-old heir about to inherit something he did not build and who feels the weight of that responsibility. Or to help a couple who relocated from the Gulf and realise that the wealth they accumulated has not answered a single question about how they want to live.
These are not financial questions. They are human questions — about identity, purpose, legacy, duty, fear, and meaning. They are among the most complicated questions life offers, and wealth makes them harder, not easier. The banker cannot work on these. The CA cannot. The lawyer cannot. This is the space Praveen Saanker occupies.
The Questions We Work On
Families and individuals come to Praveen at specific moments — not when things are going smoothly, but when the weight of a decision exceeds what their existing advisory circle can address:
What does the patriarch actually want from the next twenty years of his life, now that financial security is no longer the organising force? Is the next generation ready to carry the weight of stewardship — not financially, but as human beings? What happens to the family system when the founder steps back from the business he built? How does a couple align on purpose and values when financial pressure is no longer what holds them together? How does a family move from philanthropic intent — the desire to give back — to a functioning institution that outlasts the founding impulse?
The work spans family business succession and governance, conflict facilitation, wealth psychology and life transitions, next-generation readiness, philanthropic strategy and institution-building, and Vedic consultations in astrology, numerology, and Vastu Shastra as decision-support frameworks for major transitions.
All advisory and coaching work is conducted directly by Praveen Saanker. There is no associate model and no delegation. Engagements are relationship-based rather than transactional.
Learn more about the work we do
See the moments when families reach out
Professional Foundation
Praveen Saanker spent over two decades in senior wealth management roles within two of India’s most recognised financial institutions.
At HSBC India, he served as Senior Vice President in Wealth Management and Private Banking, overseeing advisory relationships across South India. The role involved working directly with high-net-worth and ultra-high-net-worth families on their financial structures, portfolios, and long-term wealth strategies — an experience that provided deep, first-hand understanding of how significant wealth is held, structured, and transmitted across generations.
He was subsequently part of the founding team at ASK Wealth Advisors, serving as Director in the Family Wealth and Family Office Advisory division. ASK was among the early independent wealth advisory firms in India, and the family office practice was built from the ground up. This experience went beyond portfolio management into the governance, succession, and family dynamics questions that institutional wealth management does not typically address.
This financial foundation means that when Praveen advises families today, the wealth context is never abstract. The structures, the instruments, the regulatory environment, the scale — these are understood from the inside, from years of working within the systems that manage significant wealth. It is this understanding that allows the advisory work to go beyond the money to the human questions underneath, without ever losing sight of the financial realities that shape them.
Praveen also holds an Executive MBA from IMD Business School and an MBA in Finance from the University of Madras.
How this experience shapes the advisory work
Psychological and Academic Depth
The questions that UHNW families face at inflection points — succession, identity, generational readiness, the emotional weight of inherited wealth — are not purely financial or structural. They are deeply human. Addressing them requires an understanding of how people actually behave under the pressures that wealth creates, not just how they should behave.
Praveen Saanker holds a doctorate in clinical psychology from the University of Canterbury, along with a Master’s in Counselling from the same institution. This training informs every dimension of the advisory work — not as therapy, but as a depth of understanding that allows the conversations to go where they need to go.
When a patriarch says he is ready to step back from the business, the question of whether he actually is — and what will happen to him psychologically when he does — is one this practice is trained to address. When a couple disagrees about how to raise their children in the context of significant wealth, the conversation benefits from understanding the emotional dynamics underneath the disagreement, not just the financial implications. When an heir feels paralysed by the weight of inheritance, the work is about identity and purpose, not about portfolio review.
This psychological depth is what distinguishes the coaching and mentoring work at Vedicology Advisors from conventional advisory. It is not counselling or therapy. It is advisory and coaching informed by clinical training — a distinction that matters, because it means the human dimensions of wealth are addressed with rigour, not intuition.
Wealth psychology and coaching work
Vedic Sciences
Alongside his financial and psychological expertise, Praveen Saanker has pursued a parallel lifelong study of India’s classical Vedic sciences — Vedic Astrology (Jyotisha), Numerology, and Vastu Shastra. This study has been conducted under multiple teachers in established lineages, with a depth and discipline that reflects decades of sustained practice rather than casual interest.
For the families Vedicology Advisors serves, these are not unfamiliar systems. Serious Indian families have always used Vedic frameworks for major decisions — timing a business launch, selecting a property, naming a child, evaluating a partnership. What is often missing is a practitioner who can offer these consultations with the sophistication that a family’s other decisions demand, and who understands the broader advisory context within which these decisions sit.
At Vedicology Advisors, Vedic Astrology, Numerology, and Vastu Shastra are offered as decision-support frameworks — systems for evaluating timing, environment, naming, and alignment during major transitions. They complement financial, legal, and strategic counsel. They do not replace it. There are no claims of prediction, no guaranteed outcomes — only structured frameworks grounded in classical knowledge, applied with the same rigour that characterises every other dimension of the practice.
Praveen also teaches classical texts and courses through the Vedicology India Academy, a separate educational platform that serves students and seekers of Sanatana Dharma. The teaching work is distinct from the UHNW advisory practice, but it reflects the same depth of scholarship that informs the Vedic consultations offered to families through Vedicology Advisors.
The Vedicology Foundation
In 2024, Praveen and his wife Vandana Praveen established the Vedicology Foundation — a Section 8 non-profit organisation focused on empowering orphaned youth in India through scholarships, aftercare support, and vocational enablement.
The Foundation operates active programmes across six scholarship categories — higher education, vocational education, NEET, JEE, UPSC, and CAT coaching — serving orphaned youth and single-parent adolescents from Child Care Institutions across Tamil Nadu. Its nine areas of work address housing insecurity, aftercare support, mental health, social acceptance, gender disparities, legal documentation, employment challenges, bridging educational gaps, and navigating the path to independence. The Foundation is funded in part by revenues from the Vedicology India Academy. Vandana Praveen serves as Director of Finance.
For Praveen, the Foundation is not separate from his advisory work — it is the expression of the same conviction that wealth must be held in stewardship, not simply accumulated. When a family asks about setting up their own philanthropic structure, the guidance comes from having done it: from writing scholarship criteria, selecting beneficiaries, managing aftercare programmes, building relationships with Child Care Institutions, and reporting to regulators. Not from theory.
The distance between advising on philanthropy and practising it is significant. The Foundation closes that distance.
Philanthropic advisory for families
Praveen Saanker advises from Chennai and Dubai, and works remotely with clients internationally. Initial enquiries are handled directly — there is no intermediary and no intake process. If the questions described on this page are the ones your family is navigating, we invite you to begin a conversation.