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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.

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Building e-communities

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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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