Pingali Venkayya
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Pingali Venkayya, the designer of the Indian national flag, was born on August 2, 1876, in Bhatlapenumarru, near Masulipatnam or the present day Machilipatnam of Andhra Pradesh, India. After his high school at Masulipatnam, he went to Colombo to complete his Senior Cambridge. On returning back to India, he joined as a railway guard and then as a government employee at Bellary and later moved onto Lahore to join the Anglo-Vedic college to study Urdu and Japanese.
During 1906-11, Pingali spent most of his time researching on staple varieties of crops and came up with a study on a special variety called Cambodia Cotton. With the ruling British taking notice of his study, Pingali came to be known as Patti Venkayya (literally 'Cotton Venkayya').
Returning back to Masulipatnam, he spent 5 years from 1916-1921 researching flags of 30 countries and finally came up with the present tricolor. However, the flag of Vande Mataram movement is sometimes thought to be the antecedent of Venkayya's tricolor.