A 6,000-runner marathon, delivered on a fixed date every year

An annual Bengaluru mass-participation run held in tribute to Dr. Puneeth Rajkumar, staged each year on 17 March — his birthday — in association with Ashwini Puneeth Rajkumar. Editions grow year on year; the latest crossed 6,000 participants. Unlike client work, the deadline is a single immovable morning: everything either works on race day or fails publicly in front of thousands of people.

The edition runs on a budget of roughly ₹38 lakh. I coordinate a network of 12–15 vendors and run the design and production pipeline. That means holding every supplier to one date — route and on-ground setup, signage and branding, bibs and merchandise, print and stage build — while keeping my design team's output moving through approvals in time to be manufactured.

The work is dependency management: identifying what has to be locked first, and what cannot slip without taking something else down with it.

Recurring delivery is the real test. Anyone can run one event. Running it annually, at growing scale, against the same fixed deadline with a family legacy attached to the name, is a track record rather than a one-off.

The work reaches well past the start line: the most recent edition drew more than 1.5 million people online organically, off the campaign and celebrity call-outs we produced around it.