How funny is it when you hear the female penguin ask a male one , "Kya ji kaisi paki macchi?" and the latter replies, "Akhri maze ki banaye begum tum.Tumhare haatha chumna dil bolra mereku." 

It was nearly a year ago when two cousins Mukheem Hannan and Zubair Khan used a boring evening to garner city-wide fame. Wonder how? By turning popular animation cartoon Pingu into a Hyderabadi!

So what exactly did the cousins do? They duo took the videos of the popular cartoon Pingu and dubbed it in Hyderabadi lingo! Sounds interesting, isn’t it? But that’s not it. Buoyed by the success of their first video, they continued to create a few more series using the videos of other cartoon shows which went on to become a hit, so much so that their YouTube channel titled ‘Zubair Mukheem’ now has 1,152,364 views.

Asking about how the concept came to their minds Zubair, a student at Al Habeeb College of Engineering, Hyderabad, mentioned that on a lazy evening when he and Mukheem were getting bored, they decided that they should do try their hand at dubbing. “We searched for many cartoon characters and as Pingu doesn’t have dialogues, we choose to start with that. Elucidates Mukheem, “Pingu has no voice and so we decided to give it a voice and that’s how Hyderabadi Pingu was born.”

But the duo never thought that a fun evening thing would give them fame. Mukheem, who has completed his education and is pursuing a job right now, says, “We thought we’d get around 1,000 views but today we’ve crossed a million! It’s a great feeling.” Zubair echoes him as he says, “We turned into celebrities overnight. The response was amazing. We never expected anything on such a huge scale.”

The duo has attained fame at a young age, but Zubair seems to have got used to being a celebrity now. He says, “Initially it was exciting when people recognised me and all. But now it all feels normal.”

Also Zubair (19), the younger among the two, has got a new name, “Many people in my college call me Pingu! Initially I was known as a singer but now that has changed.”

With nearly 3,144 subscribers for their channel, the duo wants to keep going and make their fans laugh. Mukheem says, “We did it just for time-pass. But since people liked it so much, we continued to make other videos.”

After a series of six videos, they continued to make another series of ‘Oggy and the Cockroaches’. Then, they turned more creative and started dubbing famous advertisements and the first among them was ‘Shubh Aarambh’ which again turned out to be a hit with YouTubers.

The duo has meanwhile moved on to Facebook and have 5,608 fans on their page titled ‘Hyderabadi Rocks’ on which they share funny cartoons and videos – all in Hyderabadi lingo.

Hansika Sawhney, a mobile phone stylist from Hyderabad, tells us how a simple idea changed her life and helped her carve a business niche for herself

Hansika Sawhney

An idea can change your life. And if it’s something avant-garde, there’s nothing like it! Meet Hansika Sawhney, a 24-year-old Hyderabad-based entrepreneur who just proves how true that is with her business venture InkyPinky, an innovative and funky enterprise that has been garnering a dedicated fan base for some time now.

It all began in September 2012 when Hansika wanted to take up a job. The girl who has always been “keen to do things on my own”, decided to start off by herself and while she was considering what would be an ideal thing to do came one brilliant thought! “I love dressing up my phone, and why don’t I do it for others?” she thought.

“What an idea sirjee!” and hence began this wonderful journey…

What’s InkyPinky?

InkyPinky is all about making a style statement. But how? With your phone! Hansika capitalised on a really unique target audience that not many had even recognised. The BCom graduate from St. Francis College for Women, Hyderabad, designs mobile phone accessories and helps you give a personal touch to your phones. Says Hansika, “What I sell, you can’t find it anywhere in the market here. They are all unique because I make them myself and you get that personal touch which you desire.”

Hansika began with dust plugs for the audio jack (Rs 250 – Rs 500), a unique way to protect phones from dust that accumulates, yet make your phone look chic. They are available in various designs – bows, flowers, cartoon characters, crystals et al – and are an instant attraction. Then she started designing mobile phone covers (mostly iPhone covers. But she does make covers for other phones too on request, ranging Rs 700-1,200) for which she is getting several accolades. “It all depends. Sometimes I make exclusive pieces and other times I make a collection. But either way I ensure that my customers get the best quality products.”

Striking a chord

Belonging to a business family, the girl also knows how to measure the audience interests. “I ensure there is variety in my products. I even come up with seasonal collections. It’s summer now, and so there are lot of flowery patterns in my designs,” she explains.

Interestingly when Hansika began work, she hardly had any competitors. “Nobody was doing anything similar then. You do get accessories from mobile dealers. But they are monotonous and repetitive and so I decided to come up with unique patterns,” she further says.

Catering mostly to the female customers, the mobile phone accessories have a lovely touch of feminism to them. “I customise my designs to suit the needs of the buyers. I have special requests sometimes and I make them.”

Hansika's dust plugs

Customer Satisfaction

Hansika says the most important thing for her is customer satisfaction. “I personally understand the needs of my clients and ensure I am able to deliver what they want. In fact I have many clients who leave messages thanking me. It feels great,” she smiles.

With social media in tow

Hansika attributes her steady business to social media. Saying that she has mostly built a loyal set of customers through Facebook she adds, “It was through Facebook that I got to reach out to large number of people. I can interact with my followers and know what the response is.”

Also, InkyPinky has customers from all over India and Facebook is the medium of interaction for them. “I also take orders on Whatsapp,” she quips.

In fact, Hansika wants no stone left unturned and in a hunger “to do something new and unique”, will soon be launching a mobile phone application through which orders can be placed. “My entire clientele is people who own smartphones, and I felt having an application would be great.”

Single force

A young girl of 22 when she started off, Hansika didn’t take any help from anyone. Not even her parents. “My family is proud of me because I am here due to my own effort,” she smiles.

You can connect with her at www.facebook.com/InkyPinky.in or call 9885790915.

“When I see an  interesting app or a product, especially if it’s by a Hyderabadi, I try to make the most of it.” 

- Ravi Korukonda

With increasing number of start-ups making Hyderabad their base, a growing trend of various business ventures is becoming more and more prevalent. From technology to art to food, everything is here and the most interesting thing about all these is that they have cropped up over the past four years. However, factors like political unrest have contributed to a failure of many of them. Also, for most such start-ups, in spite of a novel business idea, a competent working team and even the right kind of marketing strategy, survival is becoming difficult due to lack of buzz and that’s where Start-Up Hyderabad comes in.

So what do they do? Led by Ravi Korukonda, COO of Purple Talk Inc., (the mother company of Start-Up Hyderabad) they focus on promoting startups that show promise by “creating buzz to help them get global visibility”. Says Ravi, “When I see an interesting app or product, especially if it’s a creation by a Hyderabadi, I try to make the most of it. I have always been vocal about the need to encourage start-ups and have been doing that informally for long and I think this is just a formal way to go about the same now.”

Team Start-Up Hyderabad

Start-Up Hyderabad features unique, hip and happening businesses round town, by means of a blog and also a Facebook page. “When a business is featured on our website, it would be a promotion for them, and open gates to more people who will be able to know about the businesses. We have interesting write-ups about every business we feature on our site and sometimes we don’t even contact them and do it on our own, through some research.”

Also, this would be a way to cross-promote each other! “When we feature them, all their fans know about us, and that is an advantage for us, at the sometime they get recognition too.”

But there must be some criteria for selecting the featured businesses? “Not really! For us a start-up is something that is able to create an impact, a 100 billion dollar acquisition of something one that will generate a lot of jobs in a couple of years or is based on a unique concept. For now we have no criteria. We take everything as it comes.”

Interestingly their Facebook page has around 1,200 likes garnered in a span of three months. “People have liked our page either due to the businesses we have featured or due to being start-ups themselves,” Ravi adds.

The best thing about Start-up Hyderabad is that it isn’t a business model and Ravi says it will probably be like that for a while and adds, “I am taking out some time helping out other people. For now we haven’t thought of generating any revenue through this. But if we have to sustain it for long, it will have to become an independent business in itself and we will probably make a business model out of it then.”Having featured nearly 25 businesses so far, do they have a plan to make it a media outlet sometime? “You never know. We haven’t thought about that yet. But it could happen.”