Channelling artistic excellence via web

Hyderabad: Each one has latent talent that lies untapped due to lack of opportunity. All it needs is a right platform to showcase your skill. Youthopia.in, promises to bridge this yawning gap for the unexpressed.

Hyderabad-based engineer turned entrepreneur, Surya C. Adavi, conjured a user-friendly platform for “not so good” amateurs to express themselves through —  arts, literature, music and photography. Further, the platform has a feedback system, wherein experts from each field provide guidance on enhancing your skills.

From a Unicef child delegate for promoting primary education to being a young entrepreneur for Tata Jagruti Yatra 2008, Surya has always been passionate towards artistic work. However, as an enthusiastic 18-year old, when he was looking for a platform to enhance his skills, Surya was out of options and that is when the idea of creating Youthopia came into being.

“80 per cent of the students have zeal to express themselves but there is no platform, so we thought let’s create a platform where anybody can express themselves and along with this we also added a feedback system. As a country which has great soft skills our technology enabled platform will propagate the idea of free-style expression,” Surya added.

Started three years ago, the platform has about 4,000 plus users and has 60 interns coming in every quarter who are given specific topics to write every week and by the end of 12 weeks, they are equipped with writing about any given topic.

But if you thought Youthopia was only about college students, then the varied age group of this platform will surprise you. Users range from the age of 16-55 years, as he defines youth as someone who is young at heart.

When asked how the platform is different from regular blogs that have been growing, Surya says, “On an average personal blog, a person may get a maximum of 10,000 hits but when the same thing is written on our site, the visibility level is high as we have almost 1.2 lakh hits per month and along with this we also provide them with positive feedback.”

Based on the concept of passion ignites more passion, the platform has 25 dedicated team members, who along with their regular work also contribute towards making the website a better place.

Along with showcasing the hidden talent of India’s ‘youth’, Youthopia, under its parent firm GrayMatter8 also founded by Surya, conducts offline workshops, jamming sessions for budding artists in the field of theatre, music and photography.

So, next time should you be apprehensive about displaying your talent, or feel left behind because of lack of expert guidance, you know where to head!