Hyderabad 10k - What a Run!

Last week I wrote about the then planned Hyderabad 10k sponsored by Radha Realty. Well the run is done and what an event has it been! About twenty five thousand people turned up and it was like carnival time. All along the route one could see several bands play live music of all kings: Jazz, Rock, Metal, Telugu Film Music, Hindi Film Music to name a few. A few people sky dived from 6000 ft in air, dodged the thousands of colourful balloons let loose to land at the venue. After the run, there were a series of onstage shows blasting more Hindi Film Music. There were movie stars, sports celebs and politicians all hogging the limelight, but the true winners were the thousands of young men and women who woke up early in the day for the cause.

On the sidelines, the event also highlighted the many paradoxes that characterise India. While it attracted the young and upwardly mobile crowd in huge numbers, there were also several street boys busy collecting empty water bottles and left over food from the grounds. The Hussain Sagar lake venue was picturesque but also reeking of foul smell at several places, clearly lot of cleanup is still left. And at one part of the route, one could see a barber go about his regular business on the pavement blissfully unaware of the hungama around.

All in all, the event is gathering more and more critical mass and is setting the trend for future such events. Champion Chips were used for the first time. To me personally the fact that I finished a 10k for the first time was a big accomplishment. The event broke a myth I held, that completing a 10k requires one to be majorly fit. Fitness does impact the time taken, but finishing the 10k is something I now believe many people can aim for. I held a similar myth about 5k runs three years ago but that soon changed after I attempted my first one. I now hope to complete a 10k in under an hour, determined not to let go of this momentum. The goal after that is the half marathon version in next year's run.

10K Run in Hyderabad

Hyderabad gears up to host a 10k Run about a week from now. This is the fourth time this annual event is being held and this year the expectation is that it will have about twenty thousand participants, an all time high. A half marathon is also being included, hopefully we will have the first marathon ever as well at Hyderabad next year.

Now those familiar with how this goes in the US or other Western countries, all kinds of runs 5k, 10k, 22k, 44k, 50k and even 100k are common events. The processes to organise the runs, canvass participants, publish results (check this site) are highly streamlined. Hyderabad 10k aims to do exactly the same for Hyderabad; though the whole affair seems to be taking a lot of time, effort and money, eventually this should reduce. One of the leading organizers Padmaja Reddy when asked if she is running the 10k remarked I run the rest of the year so that Hyderabad can run on this day. Among the other organisers, Pullela Gopichand is an amazing individual - he is one of the greatest Badminton players India ever had but is so down to earth.

Though I did run a 5k in the summer of last year at a not so bad speed, this 10k will be a challenge being my first. Looking forward to finish it at the least!

TiE-ISB Connect 2007 at Hyderabad - It Rocked!

The TiE-ISB Connect event concluded at Hyderabad today. It was a wonderful gathering of some of the best minds in innovation, entrepreneurship, government exploring the latest and greatest happenings in various sectors of the economy - Internet and mobile, health care and life sciences, retail, infrastructure, emerging technologies etc.

It felt good to see a lot of people from all over India and abroad congregate here at Hyderabad. People from Bangalore, Coimbatore, Mumbai, Kalyan, Ahmedabad, Gibraltar, London, Silicon Valley, New York etc landed here. A friend from Bangalore was yet again impressed with the infrastructure in Hyderabad which allowed him to travel 33 kms to the event venue from Sainikpuri in less than an hour (compared to two and half hours in Bangalore).

The event is proving to be a lodestone for the best business minds all over and what more can a Hyderabadi expect!

Cricket Right-sized

The recently held World Twenty 20 Cricket championship has finally produced a form of cricket that is intense, glamorous and doesn't consume an entire day. India winning this championship is another bonus! One hopes that the newly launched Indian Cricket League will further contribute to this trend by discovering more talent and launching even more spectacular shows. Corruption within the BCCI and all the money makers there will also hopefully reduce with the increased competition.

Cricket is generally considered a non athletic game, with most people on the field stationery at any given time, much unlike soccer. The duration also drags on for an entire day and the drag on productivity of the country is sizeable. With Twenty20 the game can go on and so can one's business for the day!

Microsoft's 'Imagine Cup'

Microsoft organises an annual event, The Imagine Cup that aims to bring together the best of technology innovation amongst students onto a global forum. This year's theme was 'Imagine a world where technology enables better education for all' and the nine categories ranged from software design to embedded development, algorithm, web development, photography and short film. For Microsoft the benefits are huge - locate some of the brightest global talent many of whom may go onto join them, and also leverage their innovations into its products.

I had an opportunity to get a peek into this thanks to my cousin Chintalapati Arun Sharma whose Team Acumen was one of the contestants. It was heartening to see Arun and his team first qualify among 100,000 participants and then make it to the finals (only 8 teams in his category did so). It was very impressive to see this bright young man slog hard and put in several night outs on the project. On the final day of the project report submission, he was zipping around the city coordinating things, even though there was a major bomb blast just the previous day.

Their project titled TWIST (The Way I See Things) created a device that can help the visually challenged perceive images through touch. From the device's memory any requested image is translated to a set of 36x36 pixels which are then projected onto a tactile pad. This pad consists of pins which vary their height to create the perception of depth making it a Braille like language for pictures. The Hyderabadis happily travelled to Seoul all paid for by Microsoft of course! The kind of exposure they got was tremendous interacting with teams from across the world. I was reminded of my own horizon-broadening experiences (though much smaller in scale) when I first visited New Delhi for the KV National Games as a Class IX student, and later for my first interview for an IIM. For the generation of youth today, the opportunities to network and play on a global canvas are much more than ever before.

Eventually the six winning teams came from Thailand, Korea and Jamaica in software design and Brazil, Romania and China in embedded development. India could have perhaps done more considering that these winners were also not from Western nations.

Check out The Week's coverage of the event here and the Imagine Cup website.

Flyovers wreaking more havoc

Last month I had posted about the long pending flyovers in Hyderabad. Unfortunately tragedy struck earlier this month and a portion of the one of the flyovers under construction at the busy Punjagutta junction crashed after heavy rains. Two persons perished in the incident which was caused by nothing but the gross negligence by the authorities.

Even now several days after the tragedy there are no findings on the root cause not any action taken on guilty personnel. The same dirty politics that dogs the construction is holding back any remedial action.

Main Aaraha Hoon India!

Hero Honda is running a new TV ad on its fairly established bike model the CD 100. It starts with a young man pondering about what is there in America that is not present in India. This guy seems to have a job offer from one Mr. Richards as a building architect. He rides his bike with these thoughts, and then turns it around deciding that his designs will help him build a new India! Main Aaraha Hoon India (I am coming India!).

This is perhaps one of its first kind of ads that explicitly encourages Indian youth to leverage their talent and skills for India. Ads usually mirror what the public feels is cool or is the 'in thing'. And it sure feels good to see an ad like this run over and over again on the telly set.

Long Pending Fly Overs

A common scene in Indian cities is construction of flyovers at busy road junctions. Though the contractors claim to use new technology (precast segments and all), these seem to take years to get built. Hyderabad seems to be slightly better off than Bangalore in the pace of flyover construction but that is hardly a consolation.

This is a paradox: after all technology is available, manpower is abundant and all required resources are plentiful. Then why these huge delays? I guess the answer lies in the regular approvals required by the government agencies and sub-contracting done to small parties which inevitably have the local politicians involved. Sometimes the flyovers have to be built over statues of some venerable (and many dubious) leaders. Removing them becomes a huge hassle. These squabbles lead to most of the delays, never mind the huge trouble commuters and the common man have to undergo.