At Hyderabad’s edition of YouTube FanFest this year, Gangavva of My Village Show (they were in the news for the most viral KiKi challenge video) landed at the venue in style in a chauffeur driven car. Being her first time at a mall (the venue was Forum Sujana mall) she was in awe of the size of the building and the flights of ‘self-moving staircase’ (escalators). The multitude of fans calling out her name added to the euphoria; soon enough the 55-year-old was ushered onto the stage by a team of bouncers. Once on stage, Gangavva was her usual self, conversing in a chaste Telangana dialect and performing the skit the team had planned for the day. One of them incidentally was the KiKi challenge.
For those who are still wondering what the FanFest is — the event brings YouTube’s stars from screens on to a live stage. This is a global initiative aimed at celebrating ‘freedom to be heard, to be in the know, to be what’s next, and to belong.’
The My Village Show team performed the KiKi challenge skit with Ganagavva’s expert commentary on podalu (the term used for boys in Telangana) and their kotta pichi sokulu (new crazy interests). Srikant Sriram, the founder of My Village Show, said, “The crowd at the event was encouraging and showed their love to this home grown idea.”
The team of My Village Show was one of the 27 participants that performed at the FanFest held over three days. The different categories of performers at the fest included Zumba experts, food YouTubers, health and fitness speakers, musicians and businessmen.
At Hyderabad’s edition of FanFest most of the participants did skits or sang and danced for their fans. YouTubers, who track commercial food trends and the food industry, were given a platform to talk about their journey. So, Ravitej Ravuri of Street Byte, Srinath from Country foods and Khwaja Moinuddin from Nawab’s Kitchen had an informal chat session about each other’s journeys.
While Street Byte tracks food from the nooks and corner of the city, Nawab’s Kitchen is all about cooking desi food for orphaned children. Moinuddin’s channel gives a view of what goes into cooking and preparing Indian curries and sweets. He usually cooks in the open in big vessels over a wood fire.
The Urban Fight couple Sugandh Raka and Taskeen Fatima, had three points to discuss with their followers. These points, Sugandh says, were based on what most of their fans ask them in comments: “We spoke about ways to improve spoken English, the need to follow your dreams and to stay fit in order to have a fit mind to follow one’s dreams.”
Singer Amrita Nayak regaled her fans with her music. Also present was TeluguOne, known for their unique music.
