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E-TUESDAY
e
Networking Till You're Wired!
BT's Roshni
Jayakar parties
with Mumbai's new economy hipsters. Join in.
How does one dress for the new-e? Never
thought of that one. It's humid, the beginning of the week, and I fling my
sartorial thoughts far out of the car transporting me to Worli's Sakshi
Art Gallery. There's this eTuesday Club, a do that brings netpreneurs,
venture capitalists, technologists, incubators, ad agencies, web
designers, and media together in a networking frenzy. I'm invited. It's
work, isn't it?
At 8 pm sharp we swing through the glass
doors of Sakshi Gallery. I drop my business card into a large glass bowl,
and am promptly handed a nametag. Whatever happened to the cute colour-coded
tags? Rajeev Samant, Co-founder of eTuesday Club, jumps in to explain:
''We try and reflect the mood of what's going on in the industry.'' Chimes
in Jeannie Koo-Ps-Elson, the Co-ordinator of eTuesday Club: ''...and these
people no longer fit into neat little categories.'' (Rule No 1: your
business model must have complete flexibility).
And be punctual: there are clusters of some
30 souls, sipping Sula Vineyard's Sauvignon Blanc and Chenin Blanc (Rule
No 2: always have a revenue model in place; Samant is Sula's CEO). Music
defines the background; there are paintings too, but no one's discussing
them (yet another potential revenue-stream!). No food or drink for me;
time to network. I bump into Probir Roy, Euro RSCG Interactive's CEO, who
is sharing his experiences with Alok Vajpeyi, COO, DSP Merrill Lynch
Investment Managers, co-sponsors of the party.
Roy, an eTuesday regular, is frank:
''Earlier, it used to get packed in the first half hour.'' But the glass
door is continuously swinging open...slowly; humming conversations take
over from the music. Everyone's either exchanging notes-or business cards
(Rule No 3: don't forget your cards at office, and preferably sport deep
pockets).
Furiously stuffing my purse with business
cards, who do I spy? There's an amalgam of broadband: UTV's Ronnie
Screwvala, Data Access India's Siddhartha Ray. There are investment
bankers like Salomon Smith Barney's Brian Brown; and Prafulkumar Kenia,
Investment Consultant, Deutsche Bank. The VCs and incubators are
represented by Antfactory, Andersen Consulting, Indus Venture, and Gateway
Capital. The recruitment firms and technologists are around too. And, of
course, CEOs of a few B2C and B2B portals mingle with the media.
Of the 200-odd people who show up, many are
first-timers. From an event point of view, it's better to have different
folk each time-though there is also a large segment of veterans to
'provide continuity'. eTuesday says it had to turn down requests for
invitations (unlike the US pay-to-network model, this show is by
invitation only). I turn to Alok Kejriwal, CEO, Contest2Win.com, now
expanding to China. He smiles: ''Today, anybody with a technology play is
here. A great meeting ground for convergence.''
It's three hours since I began
networking...I'm tired. I hand over my last business card to IMG's
International Veep, Ravi Krishnan, a first-timer. Ravi's gushing:
''Anything like this is great. The space that eTuesdays focuses on is
dynamic so you get to know what's going on and who's doing what.'' At the
exit, most say they would love to attend the next one.
Like the ever-evolving world of the
internet, eTuesday has changed since the inaugural meet in the middle of
May at Indigo. Just a few months ago, internet entrepreneurs and VCs were
beaming their palm pilots at each other. Today, it's the broadband guys.
Tomorrow it could be bio-technologists. That brings me to the final rule
of the evening: you cannot get funded by attending an eTuesday. Those days
are over. Good night.
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