Hyderabad : Come August 30th and 31st. all roads in the city will lead to ISB, the venue for the biggest ever start-up festivals around creativity and entrepreneurship.  Though just in its second year, The August Fest has already emerged as the fest to reckon nationally. This is evident from the fact that it has already attracted unprecedented participation from start-ups which stood on last count at 1500 and going go up too. 60 plus funded start-ups too are taking part in the festival.

In addition to the creative, and innovative people in start-ups ecosystem competing for funding, it is also an event to watch for record of sorts as more than 100  investors, VCs and others from across Indiawill take part and facilitate a few start-ups to get funded.This event is expected to set a milestone for record number of VCs participation in any start-ups fest held sofar anywhere in the country.

Disclosing this at a curtain raiser for The August Fest, Mr. K.T. Rama Rao, Minister for Information Technology and Panchayat Raj, pointed why this is unique – one of a kind.

1.      The August Fest in one of its kind Start Up Festival that is happening second time in Hyderabad

2.      It is the festival around creativity and entrepreneurship, a not so common subject

3.      It is the biggest Startups Festival ever organised in India

4.      It is a kind of precursor for the prosposed T-Hub

5.      A carnival sort of Art and  Entrepreneurship at such a magnitude, has never happened

6.      It is bringing the complete start-ups ecosystem in Hyderabad into one platform:TiE Hyderabad, HYSEA, NASSCOM, IIIT-H and a bouquet of start-ups.

7.      With crawls, talks, pitches, instant funding, films, music, fashion and more !, it is going to be an unforgettable experience for the participants,

8.      At the end of the event it is expected to fund as many as possible with seed funding

We want Hyderabad to be known as Startups Capital.  We want Hyderabad to be reckon for IT Services in India.  It started small with 500 companies participating in it last year. Now it is going to the biggest in the country.  There will be whole lot of events to be linked up to the main event

From the first day after I assumed office, when I announced that the Telengana government is going to be starting the India’s largest incubation center—T-Hub, I was very clear in my mind that the proposed incubation facility at IIIT-H(which will come up in 80,000 sq ft initially and subsequently 3,00,000 sft,)the Incubation facility is not setup to handhold the youth and destroy their creativity. It is not a day care center.  Instead, we want every youth in Hyderabad and the state of Telangana to believe   that they can change the world….And the incubation center is just a platform to exercise their creatively.  If anyone can make a change to this world, or our country or the newly formed state of Telangana, is the youth with enterprising ideas, he said.

He mentioned about two individuals—Chintakindi Mallesham, a weaver from Nalgonda who designed and created an automated Aasu machine for weaving and has been awarded the Presidential Award for Grassroots innovation.  The man didn’t even pass his 10th grade, but was able to buy a manual, program on the Microprocessor.

I also met one Kranthi Kiran Vistakula at the TEP inauguration at ISB. He is a brilliant chap from Mahboobnagar, who went to BVRT Engineering College in Medak and did his MS from MIT, was the innovator of the year at MIT, created a a brilliant product for Carpal Tunnel Syndrome said KT Rama Rao.

There is some brilliant local talent, we are not here to create new Genetic Code. We want to just give them a platform with our incubation center, KT Rama Rao informed

We don’t want aspiring and budding entrepreneurs to be bogged down with the legal, accounting, office space management, platform, mentoring support etc.  They don’t havt to struggle to find an investor or a VC to fund their ideas provided they have merit.  The incubation center is the platform that provides the basic necessary support for the enterprising, young and dynamic youth to flourish, he said.

We have the participation from World Economic Forum’s Shapers Fellows, Kairos Society whose aim is to develop entrepreneurs from the Universities around the world.  We have several MNCs such as Microsoft, Google supporting their entrepreneurship programs. ISB’s D-Labs team is actively involved.  The Agro-business innovation platform from ICRISAT is plugged in.  Engineeri9ng Staff Collge of India(ISCI) is actively involved with their Prototyping Centre.

It is a carnival of celebrating arts -photography, short films, fashion and art and entrepreneurship, which city has never witnessed. The event will feature inspiring talks from highly accomplished artists, entrepreneurs and professionals. It will showcase of interesting devices/gadgets/apps created by start-ups. People attending can listen to design talks from architects, designers and movie technology professionals.  There will be a short film competition on Hyderabad Innovation. Many early-stage start-upswill be pitching for instant seed-funding. Live art enclosures with accomplished painters/sculptors creating art pieces. Evening networking over fusion music bands.And themed city tours (crawls) visiting incubators, start-ups, design studios, art galleries and movie technology labs.

High profile and highly accomplished people from various creative fields and technology entrepreneurship will address the participants.  These include cross section of accomplished people/leaders from across industry, technology entrepreneurship, technology in movies (CG/Animation/..), design, short films and photography. They will be sharing their insights on specific topics that will be curated by the organizing team thru inspiring and engaging with great talks.

These Speakers include: SaurabhSrivastava , (co-founder of NASSCOM & Indian Angels);  Mahesh Murthy, (Founder SeedFund); Vishal Gondal, (Go Qii & India Games), Anand  Mahindra , Revathi, Visveswara Reddy, MP and formerly Angel Investor; K.T. Rama Rao, Minister for IT; Shushil Varma, Transit Architect behind Station design for Hyderabad Metro; SukranthPanigrahi Art Director of Chak De India and Rajiv  Chilka the creator of ChotaBheem

Tech Stock Pitches for Instant seed-funding (10Lacs) is another activity where the brightest brains will present their brilliant ideas for five minutes and take Q&A for three minutes and walk out with instant funding of Rs 10 lakhs.Their pitches will be judged by distinguished professionals and investors from various angel networks in tehcountry like Hyderabad Angels, Chennail Angels and Indian Angel network and several early stage seedfundsfromacrfossteh country.

An Idea Camp, Unstructured Design Workshop is an interesting part of teh workshop where teams comprising of smart creative students along with young prpfessionals and entrepreneurs will work on coming up with interesting new ideas for technology products, in a design thinking workshop organised by by ISB D-Labs.  And many such attractions wait to lure more participation.

Mr. Murali Bukkapatnam, President – TiE Hyderabad said, “The AugustFest 2014 will be a great platform for early-stage start-ups as they will get exposure and opportunity to infuse creativity and innovative ideas from various fields. This fest will also open the path for pitching and getting instant seed-funding for the start-ups. The concept of this festival very well gels with the vision and objectives of TiE.”

Conceived by Eat Sleep Drink (ESD) start-ups in 2013, the second edition of August Fest is an event for start-ups and creative professionals that is also conceived and curated by start-ups.  “ESD start-ups is all about providing an opportunity for various verticals; Movies, art, and tech start-ups. This festival is going to enhance the start-ups eco-system to be more vibrant and encourage many to take plunge to make their dream a reality” added Suresh Perugu ESD Co-Founder

Though start-up Fests are common, but, this one is very uncommon and not so the regular types.Keynotes, interactive how-to-sessions, powerful lessons and the fest to cherish for lifetime.

There will be short film competition on “Hyderabad Innovation”. It will be a great platform for early-stage Start-ups pitching for instant seed-funding. Live art enclosures with accomplished painters/sculptors creating art pieces.  During the day for tour enthusiasts there will be themed city tours (crawls) visiting incubators, start-ups, design studios, art galleries and movie technology labs. Evening networking over fusion music bands, shared Suresh

The event will be a convergence of several creative fields. Aimed at start-ups, soon to be start-ups, designers, artists, architects, creative professionals (photography/ Short films/Indy movies/Movie technologies), the fest is expected to attract 1500 participants that will get cross-stumulated by the presence of several creative fields at the event.