We hope you all had the opportunity to take a festive break and are now looking forward to new beginnings in 2018 at home, work, school, etc. On behalf of the I for India team and our entire community, we wish you all a very happy, healthy and successful 2018 !!!
It was a pleasure to meet many of you at our New Year’s Event, which brought together many of our veterans and new patrons. This newsletter is a quick event update with highlights & pictures.
As always, we got off to a prompt start as planned and our sincere thanks to the attendees for your timely arrival to make this possible ! Sathish Duraisamy welcomed the audience with a brief overview of I for India and our journey so far and also introduced the core team and families behind the I for India movement, which we believe was helpful especially to the first timers to our event. Following this, the rest of the event was presented by Sahana Sathish, our host for the evening.
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. Mircko Party then enthralled the children with his bag of tricks, including some interactive magic, fun and participation from the children in games, balloon modelling, etc.
Following this, we had a range of Bollywood performances from Shri B Dance & Entertainment (https://www.facebook.com/ShriB97) including an interactive dance workshop with the audience. A special feature of the act was our very own ‘Salman’ in their troupe, who added a very fun and surprise element to the performance, dancing to some all-time favorite songs of Salman Khan.
The stage was then taken over by Sara with a scintillating belly dance in 3 separate acts which also equally engaged the audience with their participation. Her last act featuring some groovy Bollywood numbers got much of the audience joining her on the dance floor.
With much of the audience already up on their feet, this was the perfect opportunity for our DJ for the evening Kunal of Deejaydee Music (https://www.facebook.com/deejaydeemuisc/) to throw open the dance floor for a pre-dinner dance session.
A meal always completes an Indian event and the audience were treated to vegetarian and non-vegetarian starters served at the table during the performances, and a sumptuous buffet dinner and desserts alongside the DJ/Dance floor. JK and his team from Sri Rathiga (http://www.srirathiga.com/) did a great job as always with the food and service, alongside a house bar open all evening, to cater to beverages.
The evening also had special raffle prizes given away by our sponsor Lifeline Protect which included Samsung Tablets, Fitbits etc. The Dance Floor continued for the rest of the night and the audience merrily danced away until New Year 2018 was welcomed with a lot of good cheer and wishes across the dance floor and further more Bollywood dance medleys until conclusion at around 1 pm.
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. Due to the overwhelming response, we had reached full capacity by end November and our sincere apologies once again to all the patrons and requests for tickets which came in subsequently that we sadly could not accommodate.
Our heartfelt thanks and gratitude once again to our event partners (Sattavis Patidar Hall, Mircko Party, Shri B Dance & Entertainment, Deejaydee Music, Sri Rathiga), as well as sponsors (DNS Accountants, HDFC Limited, Lifeline Protect, Sri Rathiga).
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.
2018 Events: WATCH THIS SPACE….and ACT FAST !!!
We are working on the events for 2018 and will keep you updated in our monthly newsletters. We are also trialling a more segmented approach to our events to cater to a very diverse patronage, for instance some events with a dominant Bollywood weightage (e.g. New Year’s Eve) and others with a more regional emphasis (e.g. Valentine’s 2018). As a growing movement, we believe we need to make some continuous trials and adaptations to our event formats and your feedback and input in this would be welcome and appreciated.
Going by our previous experience and feedback, we are likely to continue with Valentine’s Day, a professional networking session to discuss Career, Investment and Finances (late spring 2018) and potentially a boat cruise or even a short holiday perhaps (Spring/Summer 2018). In addition we are also in discussions with celebrity groups in Chennai / Mumbai for the UK wide shows. Do look out for our events on our newsletters and Facebook updates.
Our advice would be to make early decisions and act fast to avoid disappointment. Our popular Early Bird offers should still feature on many of our events and we will continue with a first paid, first served format on all our events. This would give us early visibility of confirmed interest and potentially make capacity additions where feasible (e.g. 2017 Bonfire Night cruise where we scaled up boat capacity).
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.