Teaming success

A three-man team runs a festival like no other in the city which spans 100 days, over 14 weekends. In its second season, Hydourite has already created so much interest that even Ooty wants the founders, A.V. Ramakrishna, C.S. Manoj and Capt. Anand, to initiate a similar festival there.

“Just as Kala Ghoda Arts Festival is synonymous with Mumbai, Bengaluru Habba with Bengaluru and Sunburn with Goa, we wanted Hydourite to be synonymous with Hyderabad,” says A.V. Ramakrishna.

The idea of the fest came over Irani chais. “We were just talking about how more events needed to take place in the city,” says Manoj.
The three, who have known each other for a decade-and-a-half now, put together their expertise in putting together the festival. “People are often surprised that I went from the Army to events. Even I couldn’t have guessed in the 90s, when I was fighting terrorism, that I would go on and do this,” says Capt. Anand, who runs the event management company Mera Events.

So with Captain Anand’s skill in putting together events and the three’s love of culture, they began curating artistes they wanted to bring in.
“We did a curtain raiser in March 2012 just to test the waters. And while we expected 300 people, with an average drop out rate of 35 per cent, 550 people showed up that too at a venue like Alankrita Resorts, which is on the outskirts,” recalls Ramakrishna.

The festival that has brought together the likes of Padma Shri Shobana, Pt. Ronu Majumdar, fusion icons Prem Joshua and band; ghatam genius S. Karthik and now Sivamani to conclude the second season, is not a ticketed event. All the events are “entry by invite” and people have to pick up passes from the organisers.

And Hydourite has also given local artistes a platform to perform, from the Ananda Fusion Band to the 12 sitarists who played Sitar Jhankar and also the hugely popular production of the founders, Anya’s Dasvatara.

“We wanted it to be non ticketed because of several reasons. One, we could not put a price on the artistes because we had both outstation and local artistes performing and there shouldn’t have been a disparity. Two, we knew from a lot of other event organisers that ticketed events don’t do well in the city. And we really wanted to bring people in large numbers and groups, include their friends and families in their Saturday evening plans. That’s what culture is all about. It’s a community thing, it brings people together,”  Ramakrishna says.