August Fest, celebration of arts and entrepreneurship

The August Fest is the brainchild of “ESD Startups” also popularly known as “Eat, Sleep, Drink Startups!” which consists of a like-minded group of people with an immense passion for entrepreneurship. The fest turned out to be a celebration of the arts and entrepreneurship at Indian School of Business. The concept of August Fest was to build a platform for collaboration between people, teams and startups.

With about 300 participants in attendance, the Morning Panel Discussion on “Idea to Fund-Raising” was flagged off by Murali Bukkapatnam, President of TiE – Hyderabad, conducting it. Other panel members included Suresh Babu, renowned producer in the Telugu Film Industry, Bhatt Dittakavi, founder of VedicSoft, Amit Prasad of SatNav, Anil Kolli, an Investor, and Suresh Perugu of QuisonSoft. The discussion was also held on other topics ranging from bottom-up enterprise development to the role of entrepreneurship in film making, followed by a round of Q and A with the audience.

Panel discussion was followed by round one of Startup Demos. The event saw a slew of interesting products/ ideas by the participants,

• AnaNaFiT : An eco-friendly natural fiber textile company working to promote sustainable fashion with innovative banana fiber, aloe vera fiber apparels.
• A product prototype for Secure Instant Messaging for Teams presented by Venkat Yeleti.
• Shoutt: a help network that uses the power of communities to find its clients the best answers to their queries.
• FBKarts: A product that helps small and medium size enterprises to sell their products directly on Facebook.
• Construction and Real-Estate Business Models presented by Krishna Reddy Muppidi.
• Songdew is a Social Media Platform for Artists and Music Lovers! which enables collaboration, networking and promotion of non-bollywood artists and music.
• Duppati.com: A social media platform for online shoppers in India.

After lunch, Sachin Tummala, founder of Corpus Software, and Dinanath of The Atlanta Foundation, enthralled the audience with an insightful talk about entrepreneurship and shared insights on pricing and how not to compromise on quality. Subsequently, there was another round of startup ideas,

• Presentology Business Services: An online site that offers presentation services to its clients.
• The Filmery’s Customized Video Service presented by Nakul Gupta.
• Apres/ Nouveau, a platform for ametures/ sidelined experimenters in the field of art to interact with professionals from the industry.
• WomenSpace.in, a knowledge-sharing social platform for women.
• COIN, a platform for generating business and consumer mobile/tablet/social/web applications in reduced development time.
• Svaad, a mobile application which helps its users find great restaurants based on the dish of your choice.
• CelebConnect, a platform to connect with your favorite celebrity!

The discussions in the evening plenary was conducted by Srinivas Kollipara a startup evangelist and had Ramesh Gogula, Sanjay Kapoor, Malini Devikala, a professor at NIFT, Hyderabad and Arvind Chenji a renowned Indian photographer.

Along with the entrepreneurship demos, August Fest also celebrated culture, by having two sessions of totally six short-film screenings. A photography demo session was also part of the Cultural Track wherein a number of talented local photographers presented their portfolios to Arvind Chenji. The Cultural Track also saw a Fashion Design demo by a city-based software techie-turned-fashion designer, Shashi of Mugdha Art Studio, who shared her insights and gave away a simple mantra, “Make it all about your customers.”

In the end, the participants of August Fest were treated to an evening of fun and entertainment with a local band Reckless9 on the stage for some rock music.