Prathibha Karanth

Founder

Prathibha Karanth is the founder of The Com DEALL Trust (2000)[1], an Indian non-profit working on disability, healthcare and women & children from Bengaluru.

Prathibha Karanth is an Indian speech-language pathologist and the founder-director and managing trustee of The Com DEALL Trust, a Bangalore-based charity that runs early-intervention programmes for young children with developmental communication disorders, including autism spectrum disorder and specific language impairment.

She worked in India's principal public institutions for speech and hearing for some three decades before establishing the Communication DEALL (Developmental Eclectic Approach to Language Learning) programme in 2000.

Early life and education

Karanth holds a BA, an MSc and a PhD in speech and hearing.

Career

Karanth began practising as a speech-language pathologist in 1971 at the National Institute of Mental Health and Neurosciences (NIMHANS) in Bengaluru. From 1983 to 1996 she headed the Department of Speech-Language Pathology at the All India Institute of Speech and Hearing in Mysore, and she subsequently held visiting professorships at institutions including the Dr S. R. Chandrasekhar Institute of Speech and Hearing and the MVS College of Speech and Hearing.

Her research and teaching have covered language disorders in both children and adults, including the aphasias, the dyslexias and communication difficulties associated with autism. She has supervised seven doctoral theses and 198 postgraduate theses, written three books and published more than eighty research papers.

On 1 November 2000 she established the Communication DEALL programme, a structured, multidisciplinary early-intervention service for children with developmental language disorders, staffed by speech-language pathologists, occupational therapists and developmental psychologists. The programme is run by The Com DEALL Trust and operates units in several Indian cities.

Recognition

Karanth received the Dr Reeta Peshawaria Oration Award in 2015 and the CADRRE Lifetime Contribution to Autism Award in 2024. The Communication DEALL programme itself received a Best Practice Award in 2018.[2][3]

The Com DEALL Trust

The Com DEALL Trust runs Communication DEALL, an Indian-developed early-intervention programme for children aged two to six with autism spectrum disorder and other developmental communication disorders. Founded by speech-language pathologist Dr Prathibha Karanth, the first programme began in Bengaluru on 1 November 2000 and uses an interdisciplinary team of speech therapists, occupational therapists and developmental psychologists. In November 2025 the trust marked 25 years and launched a mobile app to extend intervention plans to parents.

The Com DEALL Trust reports the following, on its own site: