From Ishan Chatterjee – Managing Director, YouTube India, Rahul Tamada – Cofounder & CEO, Tamada Media, Supriya Yarlagadda – CEO, Annapurna Studios, Rana Daggubati – Film Actor & Producer to Nag Ashwin – Indian Film Director & Screenwriter and Satish Mummareddy – Former Product Manager, GenAI, Meta, the lineup of alumni at the StartX Summit organized by Hyderabad Public School Begumpet on Dec 26 was glib with talk on digital era and old memories.
Reminiscing their memories from school days, Nag Ashwin said, “HPS helped us to prep for the real world and we are glad to give back to the school”. Abhishek Somany- Owner, Somany Ceramics Limited reminisced his homecoming days by saying, “HPS will have a lot more alumni who will be on the world stage”.
Speaking at a session Ishan Chatterjee – Managing Director, YouTube India, himself an alumnus of HPS said, “Platforms like YouTube have democratized access to creative arts, now anyone can be creator. It has implications for mainstream media and existing business and for a creator economy as a whole since you can legitimately build business. Hyper-localization and the ability to access languages and genres is evermore possible. With a huge majority of content being consumed in short form videos now, the content landscape will change in the next 24 months by Gen- AI. It will be an exponential and exciting change.” He along with Rana Daggubati, and Nag Ashwin were part of a panel discussion on ‘Navigating the Creator Economy – A New Era of Digital Entrepreneurship’.
Elaborating on the evolution of content, Rana Daggubati – Film Actor & Producer reflected on the changing landscape for creators, “Being a creator is all about being original, you must have a story coming deep inside from you, this is important to for the content to be relevant. Our generation has seen films disappeared with digitization. Learning and unlearning is the key, you need to create a cycle. Change is going to be dramatic and quick, unless you are on that cycle, it will be difficult. It is what you choose to chase – which skill you want to pick. Earlier it used to be an imitation game. The change of thought now is that the world is one and anything that is made here can get picked elsewhere in no time.”
“The mainstream creators are going to be superpowers – with higher quality content, which is accessible much faster, much cheaper, a large set of people who can get an opportunity to do that will be superpowers” said Satish Mummareddy – Former Product Manager, GenAI, Meta added.
“When every creator can build an audience set that is very niche, monetization is an easy ball game. Short-form content is the future. Monetization is just a byproduct of the community built on loyalty and constant engagement,” said Rahul Tamada – Cofounder & CEO, Tamada Media.
At another panel discussion on ‘Intrapreneurship – Igniting Innovation in Established Businesses’. Vikas Jhabakh– MD, Motovault & Benelli India; Krishna Kanumari– CEO and MD – Sai Life sciences; Gautam Reddy– Co-founder, PAD integrated Communications; Anand Narasimhan – Head of Oncology Business, Merck; Abhishek Somany- Owner, Somany Ceramics Limited spoke of changing entrepreneurship landscape.
Anand Narasimhan – Head of Oncology Business, Merck said, “Rallying the team together is what HPS taught me. I attribute a lot of what I am today to HPS. As one of the oldest pharma companies of the world, you must reinvent yourself. It took until 2008 when the company could build a base and grow its businesses. Organic innovation is needed to overcome the inertia. The political environment plays a huge role, and we have the best startup environment in the world.”
“India is strong in generic manufacturing. You have to pick the best trend which you believe in. In R&D, you have to invest in technology ahead of time, incubate for long period of time. We need to think strategically for innovative business, studying the trends before others do. Every company has to decide its own comfort level risk. HPS as a school made us all-rounders by exposing us to a diverse environment,” said Krishna Kanumari- CEO and MD – Sai Life sciences.
At the summit’s conclusion, funding was secured by three startups—Hit Wicket, Panoplia, and Iris amounting to a total of 4.9 crores from Alumni Investors, including major contributors like Ashish Bajaj, CEO and co-founder of eLear Solutions, and Sailesh Sigatapu, General Partner at Anthill Ventures.
