[2] The eldest of four children, CV Radhakrishnan was born on 20 January 1953 in the village of Kuzhithurai in Kanyakumari district,[3] now part of the state of Tamil Nadu, India.

[3] While working in Delhi, he experienced a weakness in his leg muscles and was diagnosed with a neurological disorder known as peroneal muscular dystrophy.

[7] Radhakrishnan's involvement with the Free Software movement started with the inauguration of the Indian TeX Users Group at Trivandrum in January 1998.

[3] Working completely on free software, STMDocs is one of the main suppliers of Elsevier and has also provided typesetting services to Nature, Institute of Physics & Cambridge University Press.

Radhakrishnan has designed the campus to be an eco sanctuary that houses a range of bio-diverse species from exotic trees to birds and bees.

[12][13] Radhakrishnan supports philanthropic efforts through non-profit projects spearheaded by the Sayahna Foundation, a virtual community set up by him to promote open access publishing and collaborative digitisation of all contents that enrich humanity, culture, heritage and history.

The digitized version of Kerala Panineeyam, a treatise on Malayalam grammar and rhetoric was released under Creative Commons ShareAlike License in 2017.