One year at Kannadagottilla.com

One calm day, thinking amidst the air that has been conditioned, unconditionally, I was listening to my favorite Radio show on soundcloud. MJ Prithvi s Birthday Bakra recorded on soun
dcloud for different state audiences like me. He called up a person who was new to Bengaluru (apparently a North Indian) and started translating a hindi song to Kannada.. Then the bakra show ended saying “I taught him Kannada over a phone call”. And suddenly I wanted to teach Kannada to people through phone. Normally people go to the US and then they remember about the homeland, the language, and others appreciate their “down to earth attitude” for showing love towards our language. But if you do that samething by staying in India, you are done. You just get critics all around you.

I called Rakesh Maiya​ Shri Nidhi​ Gopal Agarwal​ to discuss this Idea. Post discussion I decided to start Kannada school through whatsapp. #kannadagottilla was the name I decided for some random reason. Rakesh, Shri and me worked on website. I didnt bother much about the name or the website design. All I wanted was to teach Kannada to 50 people within 1 year. November 14th 2014 we started it. 1st month, I checked my inbox 10 times a day to check if anyone has registered. I called all my friends to inform about this. I connected with many celebrities and “Pro-kannada activists” for support. No help and no Joy. Took a day off from office and tried calling people.

Teaching Kannada? are you crazy? Who in the world would want to learn this Kannada? Teach German buddy.. Kannada teacher Lol.. For 5 months I received many other comments and titles, and I still receive many.

Today, Kannada Gottilla​ has completed a complete 1 year. I am not alone, we have an awesome team of 20 working to achieve a same goal. today #kannadagottilla is not only about teaching Kannada, this is about cultural exchange.

1) We have 1035 students learning Kannada from all over the world.

2) We have students from 10 different countries.

3) We are recognized by 15 newspapers, 5 news channels, 2 Radio channels, 5 magazines and some only blogs and news websites.

4) Government has a budget of 50 crore to teach Kannada and still they cannot manage to reach more people.

5) We had a budget of 10,000 and we have already reached 1,000 students.

This awesome team has done it. I appreciate each and everyone who has worked towards betterment of KG.
Rakesh Maiya Shri Nidhi Shrinidhi Darbhe​ Prashanth Ekbote​ Deena Sheshappa​ Aparna Rao Kuthyadi​ Madhura Bhat​ Sameer Kolhapur​ Varun Gowtham​ Jathin Shetty​ Niveditha Gayu​ Suma Anil​ Rotta Rohith​ Hari Prasad​ Arpith Kumar​ Mahesh Mahi Surasgar​ Pooja Lakshmeshwar​ Ranju Krishna​ Shashank S Giri​ Tanuja Hegde​