Meet Aditya and Anurag: The duo behind We Are Hyderabad

Meet Aditya and Anurag: The duo behind We Are Hyderabad
Meet Aditya and Anurag: The duo behind We Are Hyderabad
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  What do a 22-year-old working for a software MNC in Hyderabad and a 27-year-old commercial real estate transaction manager in Mumbai have in common?  For starters, they are the duo behind the famous 'We Are Hyderabad' twitter handle that has become the go-to place for anything 'Hyderabadi.'  "I met Anurag via twitter in late 2014," says Aditya, who has been a 'Non resident Hyderabadi' since 2005 and settled down in Mumbai in 2010. Anurag loves to blog while Aditya is an avid quizzer. However, they are in unanimous when it comes to cricket and movies. In the making "I wanted to create a forum or some kind of common platform where Hyderabadis could share their views and stories about the city," says Anurag.  In December 2013, Anurag opened a twitter account and named the handle @WeLoveHyd. "I started sharing details about news, events etc happening in Hyderabad and also shared some Old pictures of Hyderabad." Anurag adds. Later on, after they met, Aditya suggested that they make the account a Rotation - Curation account. "I told him to follow @sweden and other popular rotation curation accounts so he got an idea. By then, the @WeLoveHyd account already had over 5000 followers," says Aditya.  Following this, they approached Twitter India to give them the @WeAreHyderabad handle, which had not tweeted from it for close to 2 years.   "Twitter India agreed and I became the first curator to explain the concept to our followers. We wanted to showcase how diverse our city was and also let Hyderabadis be heard to a bigger audience," Aditya adds.   So what are the rules for the curators? The curators are chosen on a first come first serve basis. There aren't many strict rules for the curators, who are free to tweet on whatever topic they want to. However there is one strict rule. "No debates are allowed on which movie star is better. We Hyderabadis are very touchy about that topic," they say in union. The twitter handle also help with traffic related queries, blood donation requests and promoting Hyderabad startups. "The account has been doing well after converting it to a Rotation Curation account. We get many requests to curate. A three digit number. That's all we can say," says Anurag. "The curators also have to be related to Hyderabad in some way and be able to devote time to tweet during the week and interact with fellow Hyderabadis," Aditya adds.   #Ask sessions Recently, the duo met with Telangana IT minister K T Rama Rao and hosted a #AskKTR session followed by the latest #AskRana session with actor Rana Daggubati, a few days before the release of his latest film, Baahubali. "Both sessions were great, one doesn't get an opportunity to meet politicians or movie stars every day. Both of them were very down to earth and answered queries very well," says Anurag.    A detailed email was sent to explain how they are going to conduct a interactive session. Both were interested by the concept and agreed to do it.  "The response was crazy. We had scheduled for a 1 hour interactive session with KTR but seeing the response, he was answering questions for over 2 and a half hours," says Aditya. Future plans "Our aim is to establish a presence on all platforms. We got KTR to unveil our new logo and we are already on Facebook , Instagram and Snapchat as of now. A website is also in the works," they say.  The duo eventually want to connect all Hyderabadis and be the one stop destination for news, information and everything else related to Hyderabad. "Since we have a new curator every week, it surely won't get boring," they add. The two of them are also planning to get more famous personalities on board from various walks of life who are related to Hyderabad. Meanwhile, Rotation Curation will still continue with twitterati curating the account for a week. "We are talking to various celebrities to get them on board for an #Ask Session. All we can say is that a sportsperson is on our radar," they add.

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