‘Nobody can understand your thoughts, but everyone can see your actions!’- Saikiran Gunda
The Hyderabad cricket event is scheduled for 17th &18th September 2016 wherein the first day will be dedicated to Hyderabad’s registered teams and their performances. And the following day will be the Grand Finale for winners from all the cities.
The event will have also see participation from investors, incubators, Serial entrepreneur and enablers like Yash Jain, Investment Analyst Kalaari Capital; Padmaja Ruparel, President at India Angel Network; Anirudh Suri, Founding Partner at Indian Internet Fund; Ankit Mehrotra, Co-Founder at Dineout. A list of other venture capitalist would also be a participant such as Accel, Blume Ventures, Matrix, The Chennai Angels, ICP Inventus Capital Partners and so on. SaiKiran Gunda who is the man behind convening the whole idea says that, “I am happy that I could turn this idea into reality with the help of event partners and sponsors such as Springboard, OYO, Prelab, Citrus, Indian CEO, Inc42 and many more.”
He calls himself a ‘genius’, someone who is ‘crazy’ and thinks on a different tangent most of the times. He doesn’t like to adhere to the mainstream ideas like celebrating anniversaries by cutting a cake and so on. He indeed is a unique personality who is governed by the power of his own ideas. Rules, support, guidance and approvals don’t seem to pull him back!
Sai Kiran Gunda started his entrepreneurial journey roughly 6th years ago. Like all youngsters he wanted to figure out too what he would be working on post finishing college. On being asked what Saikiran had originally planned to do he said, “I had always been into startups. I had around 20 scalable ideas in my mind when I graduated and wanted to work on them at the earliest. One of which was ‘Memilog’, based out-of-my own childhood habit of keeping a diary.” This concept was similar to the one we’ve experience with ‘Humans of New York.’
Interestingly, his pet project Memilog took off in June 2013 and the diary-writing application/ product actually took the world by storm. With its social media campaigns touching a consumer base of 2 million during the Cricket World Cup & yet again 4 million viewers during Mother’s Day campaign.
But that was not all, Saikiran Gunda, a true- Hyderbad boy wanted to dream more- do more. He created Memilog Action Army (MAA) out of randomness one day, through which he started off an internship program for students and actually received 9000+ applications form for the same. He then chose out 800+ members. The response after Memilog’s success for MAA isn’t much of a surprise.
Despite some reluctance from family on the subject of pursuing a startup founder’s life, Saikiran was adamant to take another leap and begin something else. But this time he encountered a brilliant idea & admits that he wasn’t too prepared for it. ‘Memilog’s’ team was celebrating its anniversary and they decided to call upon thier cricket enthusiast friends and some startup founders to play cricket. Venue was expecting a gathering of around 150 people but it looked like a lot of others wanted to join the game too. The number rose to 300+ and people assumed it to be a startup event. The invitees included Hyderabad’s big investors, founders and other stakeholders and they came together assuming it was an informal conference over cricket. They enjoyed beer and ate pizzas, and this was the remarkabl
Saikiran Gunda decided to take it to another level by replicating the event in 4 cities the next year i.e. 2016 as namely, Bangalore, New Delhi, Jaipur and Hyderabad. It is now being promoted as the networking event of lifetime. Designed with the aim of bringing the startup ecosystem closer, fostering entrepreneurship support for startups.
With an amazing array of activities and events to keep them busy, alive and kicking…the founders and investors are pitied against each other’s teams in the cricket matches. And that’s not all! The other activities include giving founder’s a chance to pitch their ideas that will take them a step closer to raise funding. Secondly, Gunda’s team has organized a Startup Expo where founder’s will get a chance to demonstrate their product to investors, students and industry professionals. More so the intensity will be set up high with ‘Startup Crossfire’ (panel discussions), ‘Founder’s Pavallion’ (wherein the founder’s will get a golden opportunity to chat one-on-on with the experts and get some awesome tips from them. Last but not the least, the Startup Cricket League (SCL) is also offering something known as ‘Jobs & Internship Buckets’ (an offering for students of all age groups, skill sets & qualifications who want to get lucky by working for a startup).
Let's see who wins the finals trophy after Hyderabad's round!
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Soumya is a young writer and journalist, with bachelors in Multimedia and Mass Communication. She is an alumini of the Asian College of Journalism, and finds politics and sustainability intriguing beats to work with.
