What started out as a LAN party back in 1997 in Spain has now grown out to become world’s greatest technological festival of innovation, creativity, science, digital entertainment and entrepreneurship. After being held 54 times in 20 years, Campus Party is finally arriving in Asia and India has been chosen as the Campus Party destination.
The city of Nawabs – Hyderabad is chosen as the host city and the timing couldn’t have been any better. With the immense support from the Telangana government as it recently unveiled its IT policy, Innovation policy, Policy on Rural Technology Centres, IMAGE policy and Electronics policy along with the emergence of the startup incubator space ‘T-Hub’, Hyderabad is growing out to become the one stop destination for the IT and tech industry.
CIM Global along with the Telangana Government made the announcement of this next edition of Campus Party at Hyderabad. Present at the launch of the event were government of Telangana’s Information Technology, Electronics and Communications (ITE&C) department principal secretary, Jayesh Ranjan; Campus Party director – business development, Eduardo Lorea; T-Hub co-founder and COO, Srinivas Kollipara and CIM Global India CEO, Prasant Saha.
The event for tech enthusiasts and entrepreneurs is scheduled to be held from 14 to 19 September, 2016 at Hyderabad.
“India has a huge bunch of people interested for entrepreneurship, innovation and making match between actual things and new society to flourish. Campus Party finds India the perfect place to learn from, to help and develop and we specifically chose Hyderabad because of the incubator space T-Hub,” comments Lorea on choosing India as the first Asian country to host Campus Party.
According to him, two important speakers are seen every day at any Campus Party event and so for the five day event, we can expect 10 renowned names from the tech industry. Also around 300 plus speakers will be attending the event with about 5000 young geeks, the so called ‘Campuseros’ from all over India will code, game, hack, challenge, sleep and be energised these five days.
CIM Global along with the support from the Telangana government will be organising the event and T-Hub is their partner. “SInce T-Hub is well connected with the startup industry, they will be helping Campus Party get in touch with these budding entrepreneurs”, adds Kollipara. How did the association with Telangana government take place? Explains Ranjan, “We explained CIM Global our approach towards startups and innovation and they were taken to T-Hub and as of today there is no other such facility anywhere in the country. They were impressed by that and when they explained us Campus Party, we realised that this will be a very important event to further our own goals to become the startup capital of the country.”
As far as the involvement of CIM Global is concerned, they acquired the license to hold Campus Party in India, Europe, Middle East and South Africa two years ago. “As a company we have always believed in one thing – creating common platform. Campus Party is not an event, it’s a movement. It doesn’t end at the event, it begins from there,” expounds Saha.
He further mentions that Ranjan agreed to host this event within two hours as he immediately saw that there’s a complete alignment with T-Hub and the vision of IT. They saw a perfect opportunity that can amplify what they are doing as rather than they creating something bottoms up. This event has a profound legacy and is coming for the first time in Asia.
In terms of budget, Saha exclaims, “The budget is around Rs 200 millions (20 crores) and it will be held at HICC that has a total area around 300,000 sq ft. The event will witness participants not just from India but also from the neighbouring countries.”
The participation fee would roughly be $100 to $150 (Rs 6000 to 10,000) and for students who can’t afford, will get in subsidised rates. For that, they are in talks with some universities and institutions who will subsidise 50 per cent of it. CIM Global will also subsidise some of their travel part.
In terms of what are the expectations out of this event, Lorea says, “I expect that Campus Party helps the network of people that are working on the entrepreneurship and innovative side of the society grow. The event is not made by us, it’s made by the people that attend it, participate in it and interact in it. We expect that the environment in India is very promising and fertile one, and that there’s very good match between what we can bring for the country and what the country could provide to make this flourishment be very useful one for the company.”
So gamers, innovators, hackers, scientists, startups get ready to witness the the world’s greatest technological festival at Hyderabad International Convention Centre in Hyderabad from 14 to 19 September, 2016.
