Kalyan Varma is a

Bangalore Bangalore (), List of renamed places in India, officially Bengaluru (), is the Capital city, capital and largest city of the Indian state of Karnataka. It has a population of more than and a metropolitan area, metropolitan population of a ...

-based wildlife

filmmaker Filmmaking (film production) is the process by which a motion picture is produced. Filmmaking involves a number of complex and discrete stages, starting with an initial story, idea, or commission. It then continues through screenwriting, castin ...

, photographer and conservationist. He is one of the founders of Peepli Project, co-director of Nature InFocus nature and wildlife festival, and founding member of India Nature Watch. He currently freelances with

BBC Natural History The BBC Studios Natural History Unit (NHU) is a department of BBC Studios that produces television, radio and online content with a natural history or wildlife theme. It is best known for its highly regarded nature documentaries, including '' ...

Netflix Netflix, Inc. is an American subscription video on-demand over-the-top streaming service and production company based in Los Gatos, California. Founded in 1997 by Reed Hastings and Marc Randolph in Scotts Valley, California, it offers a fi ...

, Discovery Channel, National Geographic and

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, and also works with grassroots NGOs like

Nature Conservation Foundation The Nature Conservation Foundation is a non-governmental wildlife conservation and research organisation based in Mysore, India. They promote the use of science for wildlife conservation in India. History The Nature Conservation Foundation was ...

to highlight environmental issues in India. He is a recipient of the National film awards for his film Wild Karnataka and Carl Zeiss Wildlife Conservation Award.

Earlier life

Kalyan studied mechanical engineering from P.E.S. Institute of Technology, Bangalore South Campus and right after joined

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in 2001. He headed the security division of Yahoo and at that time was active in

open-source software Open-source software (OSS) is computer software that is released under a license in which the copyright holder grants users the rights to use, study, change, and distribute the software and its source code to anyone and for any purpose. Op ...

and

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communities in India and was active in pushing these technologies in the society. He was one of the core members of the annual conference

FOSS.IN FOSS.IN, previously known as Linux Bangalore, was an annual free and open source software (FOSS) conference, held in Bangalore, India from 2001 to 2012. From 2001 to 2004, it was known as Linux Bangalore, before it took on a new name and wider focu ...

. He won the superstar award in Yahoo, given to ten employees globally each year. At the end of 2004 he quit his job in order to pursue

nature photography Nature photography is a wide range of photography taken outdoors and devoted to displaying natural elements such as landscapes, wildlife, plants, and close-ups of natural scenes and textures. Nature photography tends to put a stronger emphasis o ...

. He worked in

Biligiriranga Hills The Biligirirangana Hills or Biligirirangan Hills (as referred to in biology and geology) is a hill range situated in south-western Karnataka, at its border with Tamil Nadu (Erode District) in South India. The area is called Biligiri Ranganatha ...

for more than a year before he took up full time wildlife photography and filmmaking as a profession.

Community initiatives

Kalyan is involved in fostering community among photographers and wildlife conservationists since his early years. In 2004 he, along with a team of photographers, founded India Nature watch, an online community which now has become the largest platform for wildlife photographers in Asia. This community was involved in pushing conservation of wildlife in India via visual media. In 2015, he co-founded the slow-journalism initiative the Peepli project, which delves deep into the unreported, under-reported, themes that public discourse currently abdicates. Kalyan undertook a year long project to document human-elephant conflict in Karnataka. He is one of the co-founders of Nature InFocus, an annual festival, portal, contest and a documentary production company which is one of the largest in the world, focussed on nature photography and conservation. Kalyan is best known for directing and producing the film Wild Karnataka which was the first nature film to be released in Cinema in India.

Wildlife documentaries

Kalyan has in the last decade dedicated himself to make wildlife documentaries. He has made various wildlife documentaries for the

BBC #REDIRECT BBC #REDIRECT BBC Here i going to introduce about the best teacher of my life b BALAJI sir. He is the precious gift that I got befor 2yrs . How has helped and thought all the concept and made my success in the 10th board exam. ...

...

Earlier life

Community initiatives

Wildlife documentaries

Awards

References

External links