Survival of the fittest

Hyderabad: Koteshwar Rao, who has had 15 years of experience in business development and sales, and his team emerged victorious in the first-ever Lean Startup Machine (LSM) held in Hyderabad. Regarded as the world’s most successful start-up workshop, LSM puts the ideas of aspiring entrepreneurs through rigorous tests and validation in three days. And ideas that survive here, survive the market.

Fortunately for Koteshwar, he had his idea of ‘Mind Maps’ in place since 2012 and was only looking for a nod from experts. What is ‘Mind Maps’? Koteshwar explains, “It is a technique to convert text, concepts and whatever you read into images. These images help in memorising things better. It’s science.”

Mind mapping isn’t new and was developed by Tony Buzan in the UK 45 years ago, says Koteshwar and he is only hoping to popularise it.

“You know the term ‘Photographic memory’, it comes from the fact that our brain registers and retains pictorial information faster,” he says.

Though he has demonstrated Mind Maps to 1,000s of students and corporate executives, he hasn’t found takers yet. Koteshwar says, “That’s because there aren’t many Mind Maps trainers in the city to take it forward.”

This was one of the take-aways from the LSM, where he and his team-mates, Dilip Chakravarthy, Ravi Gollapudi, Srinivas Balusu, Satya Vegi and Anuraag Reddy met parents and students on streets and got their feedback.

According to Koteshwar, “Investors at the event showed interest and have given me a month to present a business plan to scale up my venture.”
Apart from that, he is also working to translate entire subjects into ‘Mind Maps’ syllabus.