Daily Archives: February 23, 2017

Crowdfunding helps budding badminton player

Inspiration / Positive News and Features, Sports
Full of talent: Vamsi Krishna’s target will be to bag a spot in the top eight under-15 singles category this year.


Netizens donate ₹2 lakh for 14-year-old Vamsi Krishna’s training, equipment

He took up the role of a coach even before he was a professional player. A year into serious training, he burst into the national scene and won several awards. All of just 14 years, Vamsi Krishna, along with his partner, defeated the defending champions — Vishnu Pullela, son of the established badminton coach Pullela Gopichand, was part of the defending team.

Yet, the budding badminton star from the city faced a handicap in the form of poverty. Govardhan Reddy, the coach of Mr. Krishna, made an appeal on crowd-funding website ‘Milaap’ for financial assistance a few days ago.

Seeing the plight of Mr. Krishna, whose father is a bus driver, netizens showed their generous side by helping him get better coaching and equipment, donating ₹2 lakh in eight days — ₹40,000 more than the set target of ₹1.6 lakh.

“I saw him two years ago at a badminton academy when he was substituting for his father, who is also a badminton coach, on the court. I recognised his potential and immediately spoke to his father. I convinced him to let Mr. Krishna stay at my academy and get trained,” said Mr. Reddy, who runs three badminton coaching centres in the city.

“I have been training and taking care of him since his father cannot afford to spend much. We decided to get his expenses crowd-funded as we wanted to make sure that he gets the best training.”

The 14-year-old’s target would be to bag a spot in the top eight under-15 singles category by the end of the year. “I am surprised with the response online and we have already started acquiring the best equipment from Mr. Krishna,” he said.

Donations poured in from across the globe, especially from Hyderabad and Bengaluru, according to Anoj Viswanathan, co-founder, Milaap.org. “The success of Mr. Krishna’s campaign reflects the people’s endeavour and wish to support young athletes who are struggling to fulfil their dreams due to lack of funds,” he said.

Techie who extols benefits of organic milk

Agriculture, Business & Economy, Green Initiatives / Environment, Nature
Maintaining purity The organic farm set up by Kotesh Mukkamala. | Photo Credit: Arranged

Techie sets up farm not just to supply milk, but also to breed the best bovines

Just like his love for IT profession, his passion for organic milk is unadulterated. He doesn’t want to milk profits from his supply, but purely believes in maintaining the purity of nature’s gift to mankind.

No wonder this IT professional with a comfortable job in the United States has set up an organic farm not just for supplying healthy and unadulterated milk but also to breed the best bovine in the country. “To maintain purity we grow fodder on the 9 acres farm on the outskirts of the city for the 150 animals consisting of 70 cows and 80 buffaloes,” says Kotesh Mukkamala, an IT professional in the USA.

On the eight acres of the 9 acres land, he cultivates green fodder recommended by NG Ranga University to feed the animals year round. The remaining acre is used for housing cattle, staff and other infrastructure. As the grass grown in the cities is produced in the drainage segregation area and is infested with synthetics and human waste here only ground and rain water is used. Cultivation is pesticide and chemical fertiliser-free. Diet of the animals is balanced with the right quantities of protein and fodder.

His passion is also driven by the growing craze for organic milk in cities. Kotesh’s Organics Dairy currently services about 300 plus customers supplying 500 plus litres a day. Importantly, milk is delivered within two hours of milking and it never undergoes any processing.

Interestingly, lot of IT and data is used in enhancing the milking capacity of the animals and maintaining quality. “We have established data points and capture mechanisms at various levels like recording milk production patterns during different months, patterns of cattle coming in to heat during different seasons, onset of diseases and they are effectively tackled.

Mr. Kotesh says he has Murrah breed buffaloes procured from several villages in Haryana, the Jaffrabadi breed buffaloes from areas around Bhavnagar in Gujarat. The Holstein cows are from the Kolar area apart from the Ongole cows, Kankrejs, Holsteins, Girs, Ratis, Punganoors, Jerseys, Khillaris and Shahiwals.

After his success with milk, Kotesh wants to get into the breeding domain and supply the best quality semen from the top bulls breed with proper data collection and proven records. “The goal is to supply quality semen doses at optimal pricing to the farmers and help improve the average yield of animals across the country by at least 20% in the next 5 years. This would help make quality milk affordable and available to the poorest of the poor. The plan would encompass training the farmers on the best practices.”

source: http://www.thehindu.com / The Hindu / Home> News> States> Telangana / by R Ravikanth Reddy / Hyderabad – February 23rd, 2017