Food fest turns hot potato for two start-ups

Organisers of the proposed event blame HMDA for the goof-up

Trying to organise a one-of-its-kind global food festival in the city left a bitter taste for a group of youngsters. Start-ups, The Green Nest and The Next Big Thing, planned to hold a three-day event — The Humpty Dumpty Food Festival — with over a hundred stalls at the People’s Plaza at Necklace Road from Friday morning.

The organisers even marketed their event on a large scale, offline as well as online, receiving a great response. However, on D-day things went awry, forcing them to cancel the event.

The organisers blamed the Hyderabad Metropolitan Development Authority (HMDA) for failing to evict the previous event organisers in possession of the venue as the reason for the cancellation of the event, which led to losses of more than Rs. 20 lakh.

Divya Chintapalli, art director, The Next Big Thing, said, “We have been working on this project for months now and took all permissions. We wanted to make it the largest food event in the country by roping in more than 100 vendors. But all our effort, time, money, and energy have gone waste. Since we are a start-up, the HMDA officials also did not support us fully.”

For a cause

She added, “We were organising the fest for a good cause. We planned to donate the surplus amount from the event for the empowerment of children.”

According to the young team of organisers, they were told that the previous event will end by July 10 and the structures will be removed from the ground.

However, the structures and equipment were intact and not removed even till Friday noon because of which they had to announce the cancellation.

They complained that the previous event organiser landed up on Friday when they were trying to make arrangements, and refused to cooperate and blackmailed them to pay a huge amount to use their existing equipment or risk wasting time.

FIR lodged

Reacting on this issue, Kumara Swami, administrative officer, HMDA, said that an FIR has been lodged against the persons who did not vacate the premises on time and failed to pay their dues to the HMDA.

He said that there was some confusion regarding the usage of the already existing structures because of which the issue cropped up.

He added that the HMDA did its best to help the youngsters organise the event.