Caption: Vivek Madappa with his twin brother Vinod Thimmaya.
Mysore, Apr. 11
P.B. Vivek Madappa, proprietor of Humming Bird Suites Pvt. Ltd, Bangalore, visited Harvard University in the US to give a lecture on ‘Entrepreneurship: Opportunities and Challenges’ on Mar. 24 and Mar. 25.

Perhaps Madappa is the first person from the Kodava community to give a lecture at Harvard.

Madappa obtained his MBA degree from Mumbai’s Jamnalal Bajaj Institute of Management Studies (JBIMS) after completing his engineering. He worked in several well-known companies and his last assignment was at Kolkata as General Manager TATA Tea (Marketing Dept).

He quit the job and along with his twin brother P.B. Vinod Thimmaya, who is also a B.Ed. MBA graduate, started their own innovative hospitality business called Humming Bird Suites Pvt. Ltd. in Nov. 2005 that offers corporate executives, affordable accommdation alternative to the expensive star hotels in major cities in India.

They won the prestigious Emerging India Award-2009 for travel and tourism, instituted by CNBC-TV18 and powered by CRISIL. Humming Bird is one among the seven winners out of the three lakh applications received by CNBC under seven business categories.

The company has tie-ups with 70 companies like IBM, CISCO, DELL, SAP, American Express, etc. It has 300 apartments across 22 properties in Bangalore, Chennai, Hyderabad, Mumbai, Pune and Gurgaon.

Madappa and Thimmaya are the sons of Puttichanda Belliappa and late Ponnu Belliappa.

Star of Mysore had published a report about the brothers and their innovative enterprise on Jan. 15, 2010.

source: http://www.StarofMysore.com / General News / April 11th, 2012