Upcoming youth festival to address job seekers in digital space

A glimpse of the 2018 edition of the youth festival

If you try opening a popular food delivery app and your data pack is inactive, the screen projects a cutesy infographic of a gravestone with a message below that reads, "World's shortest horror story. There's no Internet. Try again." We grin every time we see it, because it rings true. Truth is, we rely on the Internet for everything, whether it's ordering the latest matte lipstick or campaigning for social justice. The world, quite literally, is on our fingertips. And Under 25, a media and entertainment company which represents creative youngsters, celebrates just that. "We want to cater to the youth by helping them create content, giving them access to festivals where they can learn more and by bringing them together as a community," says Anto Philip, 24, co-founder of the initiative.

Anto Philip

The Under 25 Summit is a Bengaluru-based annual youth festival, which sees the coming together of youth icons, social media influencers and content creators under one umbrella. This Sunday, Philip and team are launching a new property, Creator's Summit. "Digital content and creation is huge among youngsters and since many people who build national content sit out of Mumbai, we decided to launch this property in the city. It is a link between the URL and the IRL, which stands for in real life. Building communities online is beautiful, but the offline connection is important, too," Philip informs us.

The event will encompass panels, workshops, collaboration zones for youngsters to forge partnerships and to seek jobs in the social media industry, and a community zone that will feature recognisable youth platforms like Buzzfeed. A quick scan through the list of speakers - which includes popular names such as editor and writer Rega Jha, poet and storyteller Yahya Bootwala, comedian Bhuvan Bam from BB Ki Vines, Jovanny Ferreyra, curator at the Artidote, and India's youngest celebrity chef Saransh Goila - will establish just how young the festival is going to be. In effect, it is every millenial's Instagram feed, but live.

Rega Jha