We hope you’ve all had a good break over the festive and holiday season and are looking forward to new beginnings in 2017. On behalf of I for India community, we would like to convey our greetings and best wishes to all our patrons and readers for a very happy, healthy and successful 2017 !!!
It was a pleasure to meet so many of you at our End of Year Extravaganza. This is traditionally our largest event and hence a great opportunity for us to personally interact with many new patrons. Equally we hope this event also gave all attendees the occasion to broaden your social network with new acquaintances at the event.
This newsletter is a quick update with the highlights and pictures of the event.
As with all our events, we got off to a prompt start as planned at 6:30 pm. As always, our sincere thanks to all patrons for their early arrival without which this would not have been possible ! Sathish Duraisamy then quickly got onto introducing the core leadership team of “I for India” and our families, which was especially useful to the newbies to our event.
Children always come first in all our events and hence the event began with the first hour dedicated to our little guests, starting with even a special greeting from Mickey at their arrival performed by Miro from Mircko Party. Miro then enthralled the children with his bag of tricks, including some interactive magic, fun and participation from the children in games, balloon modelling, etc.
With the children all in good humour now, it was the turn of adult patrons to be entertained. The stage was taken over by Sara with a scintillating belly dance in 3 separate acts which also very engaging and interactive with audience participation. The fun was so much enhanced with a really sportive audience who happily came onto the stage in groups to join in the dance and learn a few groovy moves, and also have a photoshoot at the end of the show !
Following this was a mimicry performance from Abhinav Sahai with a fun concept involving Bollywood actors across different functions in a corporate set-up. Besides the grandeur and experience, the round table seating also worked well for a table service for starters during the entertainment. Shortly after, the audience was engrossed in the free game of Tambola conducted by our Sridhar Balachander with some very exciting prizes (Espirit Designer watches, Silver Jewellery and Bluetooth Headsets).
This was followed by a further round of raffle prizes firstly from our sponsor PT Wealth Management (luxury gift hamper and fibit), Lifeline Protect awarding a Tablet (need spec) , Tilda giving away a 20 kg bag of Tilda rice and Sri Rathigas giving free drinks vouchers. Following this were several raffle prizes from given away by the I for India team including Sriv Venkatesh and Karthik Raghavan which had 3 designer perfumes as 3rd prize, 2 fitbits as second prize and an LG LED TV as the grand first prize !! It was great to see the audience in surprise and delight with so many give-aways, almost every table winning some prize or the other ! Ramki Krishnamoorthy then closed the formal proceedings of the night with the vote of thanks.
No Indian event is complete without a hospitable meal and the audience was treated to a sumptuous vegetarian and non-vegetarian buffet dinner and desserts. JK and his team from Sri Rathigas once again did a fantastic job with delicious food as always, but also raising the experience with a full team providing table service, as well as the beverage counter open throughout the event.
Meanwhile,Prakash and his team had the DJ and dance floor set-up ready and opened up to the audience who merrily danced away until New Year 2017 was rung in with a countdown cheer from the entire audience with a live telecast of the London fireworks and celebration !
We are truly humbled and pleased with the smooth conduct of an event of this scale and once again wish to thank all our patrons for making this happen. Given the change in seating format, our capacity for the event was slightly reduced than last year and our sincere apologies once again to all the patrons who could not join us this time. We were unable to accommodate many requests which came in the last few weeks while we were already fully sold out by November.
Our heartfelt thanks and gratitude once again to our event partners (Nakshatra Hall, Sri Rathigas, Mircko Party, DJ Prakash), as well as sponsors (Tilda, PT Wealth Management, Lifeline Protect, DNS Accountants).
Our special thanks and gratitude to each and every I for India patron who attended this event and made it a memorable night, it certainly felt like a large family gathering !
The photos of the New Year’s Event and Testimonials from attendees are attached below.
2017 Events: WATCH THIS SPACE….and ACT FAST !!!
We are still working on the schedule of events for 2017 and will keep you updated in our monthly newsletters. Going by our previous experience and feedback, we are likely to continue with the Valentine’s Day Thames Cruise or similar event for Valentine’s (mid Feb 2017) and most certainly the professional networking session to discuss Career, Investment and Finances (circa April 2017).
Please look out for these and other events in 2017 on our newsletters and Facebook updates. Our advice would always be to be decisive and act fast to avoid disappointment as we will go with our first paid, first served format as with all our events. This would allow us understand confirmed interest early on and make any capacity additions where this maybe possible (which we did for example in last year’s Thames Cruise also).
On behalf of the entire team, partners and volunteers at “I for India”, we thank you for all your support, trust and patronage. Please write to us at team@iforindia.uk for any input, suggestions or ideas including future events and activities. Please also feel free to send this newsletter to your friends who you think might benefit from being part of the “I for India” Community or ask them to keep updated by liking our Facebook page.