An Evening with Friends.

Saturday (July 5th 2014): 
The Networking session for Indian Entrepreneurs Melaka was conducted at the usual place -Ayer Keroh Golf and Country Club. Turnout was not too good with only 5 members congregating on this date and place. Bharat was placid and felt bad with the insipid turnout. As I walked in at 5.30 pm,the conversation around the table was clearly lack lustre and morose. There were the usual questions of why there was lack on commitment and also why we need to do this.
Clearly the mood was not good with Siva (a founding member) questioning his own resolve to continue supporting IEM.

We  traded opinions and discussions on the probability of letting the association die a natural death since members support was limited and it was always just the few of us gathering and talking shop. Noticing the bad vibe gathering and also understanding that all this was merely in response to weariness and the lacklustre support we been receiving for meetings, I changed the mood by getting a conversation flowing on the latest happenings in Melaka politically and how it was affecting the bottom line of businessmen in general. 
That shifted the conversation away from the talk of doom and gloom into trading the latest gossip and happening in political and business world of Melaka.

Eventually when we departed I managed to corralled Bharat to have dinner with me at a nearby Club-Tiara Golf; where I had no choice but to give him a pep talk on the need to persevere and trudge on with our plans and events for the association irrespective of the current moods because I believe that once we had in place our BRAND EQUITY firmly in place, people will flock to join us and hopefully move this association to the next level. Luckily for me, the pep talk worked and we put in plan ideas to immediately plan for some events and gatherings.

Towards this effort, I hosted a meet in the Malacca Club a week later, attended by more members and we set in motion a plan to start our very own office staffed by a retired member- Mr. Krishnan (from Jasin) a former teacher. Bharat gave us a space in his Trend Hotel to start our operations with all necessary equipment to start the office.
We proposed and the members attending all agreed to donate RM 150.00 per person towards the staff salary and incidental that the office would face for an interim period.
Our first event for this networking group will be to get a GST Dissemination Talk organised for our members.

In attendance : Gunabalan, Haridass Krishnan (GM of Seri Costa Hotel) and President Bharat K.Ajmera