BT Golf Hyderabad: For Indian business leaders it was all competitive camaraderie on the links

After almost a year, BT Golf returned to the City of Pearls for the Hyderabad leg of the 2023-24 season. The exclusive and invite-only event saw close to a hundred golfers hitting the links on a balmy Saturday (November 18, 2023) morning at the Boulder Hills Golf and Country Club. Nestled amidst the offices of global IT giants like Infosys and Microsoft, the 18-hole championship course is considered one of the toughest in the country. Strategically located natural boulders and the presence of water bodies throughout the course provided ample challenges for the corporate warriors, even though many were familiar with the course.

Over the next few hours, the who’s who of Hyderabad’s corporate world took on each other at the greens, showcasing their prowess with a putter and a club in a competitive display of camaraderie that had everyone in attendance wishing for an encore.

Finally, psychiatrist Swetha Gullapalli (32 points) emerged as the winner of the Hyderabad leg of Royal Ranthambore BT Golf 2023-24 in the ladies’ category, while Vasu Merugu, VP-Product & Analytics at Head Digital Works, won the award in the 0–14 men’s handicap category and Vidyasagar (33 points) won in the 15–24 men’s handicap category.

Syed Akbaruddin, India’s former Permanent Representative to the UN and currently the Dean of the Kautilya School of Public Policy, was the chief guest and gave away the prizes. Speaking at the post-event presentation, he said, “I came to Hyderabad thinking I would retire and play golf, but I see that the young people have done much better than me. So, perhaps it fits in better while you are active and tired, and retired players like me don’t do very well, so congratulations to all of you. Hyderabad is a boom town, and golf is also booming here.”

Among the other players who teed off on Saturday in the iconic city of the Charminar and Golconda Fort were Srinivasa Rao Aluri of QuNu Labs, Vinayak Reddy Chintapally of JPMorgan, Anil Yamani of OSI Digital, Q-Mart’s B.V.K. Raju, Deepak Gullapalli of Head Digital Works, Murali Bukkapatnam of Volksy Technologies, A.V.N. Reddy of Roshni Crop Sciences, and Ravi S. Athmakuri of Lemongrass Consulting.