I hold approximately 20+ years of work experience – approximately 10 years as an entrepreneur and equal number of years working in the corporate sector handling roles in Business Development and Sales. I am currently Project Coordinator at SAMVAD – Society for Advocacy and Development, South (SAMVAD Advocacy is an NGO headquartered in Jabalpur MP, empowering key leaders of social movements, their supportive NGO members and activists) and Bureau Chief of a Hindi fortnightly publication – Neeti Marg.
I also run a support group on Facebook for women in domestic abuse situations called Invisible Scars. I started to volunteer with TEDxHyderabad in early 2015.
Describe your organisation? 
TEDxHyderabad is an independently organized TED event in the city of Hyderabad in its second year of existence. TEDxHyderabad is a not for profit organized by SAHE (Society for Advancement of Human Endeavour). Through these events we aim to catalyse impact in the city by building a community of Thinkers, Enablers and Doers! TEDxHyderabad has been a wonderful journey, with over 79,000 members as part of our virtual community on FB and almost 3500 attendees who are part of our close knit actual physical community.
TEDx events are open source, local and community-driven events that inspire innovation, thought leadership and visionary insight. Organizers host TEDx events out of passion because they truly believe in the power of ideas to change the world. We have done 11 events so far.
Which cities are you operating from?
TEDxHyderabad is a local city level flagship event for the city of Hyderabad/Secunderabad/Cyberabad
Why was the organisation set up? / What prompted you / the founders to set up the organisation?
TEDx is designed to give communities, organizations and individuals the opportunity to stimulate dialogue through TED-like experiences at the local level through licensed events. TEDxHyderabad came into existence when Jay Heratti, the Director of the TEDx Program in NYC expressed deep interest in laying down the foundations of a strong TEDx community in our beautiful city of Hyderabad. TEDxHyderabad is organised by a not for profit society called SAHE (Society for Advancement of Human Endeavour)
What’s your involvement / How did you get involved?
I am a core team member at TEDxHyderabad and a Licensee of TEDxHyderabadWomen. In both these roles, I volunteer as I am extremely passionate about bringing fabulous ideas to the fore and enabling community building through those ideas.
What is the mission of the organisation?
- Short Term goals?
- TEDx was created in the spirit of TED’s mission, Ideas Worth Spreading and TEDxHyderabad is part of this mission. Our goal is to bring together bright minds to deliver talks that are idea-focused, and on a wide range of subjects, to foster learning, inspiration and wonder – and provoke conversations that matter. Across TEDx events in India, TEDxHyderabad aims to build an ecosystem of collaboration and not competition as well as establish leadership position
- Long term goals?
- Our intent is to route the ideas generated through our TEDxHyderabad events to SAHE, where we will focus on doing social impact activities through a sustainable model of philanthropy and entrepreneurship. We want to mobilize the enthusiasm and leverage the passions of our community members and work on relevant social problems for the city of Hyderabad. We participate in social projects, encourage entrepreneurship and help to bring in accomplished speakers to who can empower and motivate people
Are you currently running any special initiatives?
Currently we have five social initiatives, which we do through SAHE. All of these initiatives have come through our TEDxHyderabadSalon events. Salons events are events that re-engage the community and team during the time between official TEDx events, and spark discussion on issues of interest to the local community
- Save10KBores (TEDxHyderabadSalon on Civic Responsibility) – A do it yourself rain water harvesting initiative, to recharge defunct and dried up borewells in Hyderabad
- 100K First Response (TEDxHyderabadSalon on Healthcare) – A program aimed at training 100,000 individuals as first responders across the city of Hyderabad to reduce the time it takes to reach out to a medical emergency patient or accident victim. The first 2 batches of training have already been conducted with the support of GVK EMRI
- NGO Connect Platform (TEDxHyderabadSalon on Technology) – A marketplace for NGOs where both volunteers and NGOs can connect as well as an open source technology stack that NGOs can utilise for their technology needs
- Revive Hill Fort Palace (TEDxHyderabadSalon on Art & Music) – An endeavour to revive the beautiful majestic location of Hill Fort Palace to its original condition to enable it become a hub for performing arts
- Adopt Yeravalli Village (TEDxHyderabadSalon on Education) – This is an initiative to adopt and create a model village such that this model can be replicated for other villages. This is being done under the guidance of Mr. Krishna Prasad Tenneti, who started this initiative
How do you fundraise?
We seek sponsorships for our events. These sponsorships can come in cash or in kind. We also encourage contributions and funding for our projects as well as active involvement of the local community as volunteers to take the social impact activities forward. All our initiatives are community led initiatives.
How can others help?
Others can help through active involvement and knowledge sharing, allocation of resources, sponsorships and funding projects.
Who are the faces behind the organisation: Founders, Directors, Board Members?
TEDxHyderabad is run by Dr. Anthony Vipin Das who is the Licensee and TED Senior Fellow as well as Viiveck Verma – the Co-organizer and Community Lead.
Our website – www.tedxhyderabad.com
FB Page – https://www.facebook.com/tedxhyd/
