British Business Group Pune
Promoting Partnership and Progress

We are constantly striving to do better every year and bring in good and well-known key note speakers for our events. Last year's Highlight was the charity ball event in May and the Panel discussion which was conducted in November wherein we had very special guests and leading industrialists from Kirloskar brothers and Rolls Royce along with the Deputy British High Commissioner present for the event. We look forward to active participation and support from our members to scale up the quality of events further. Just to share a Short brief of our events

21st May 2016
Mid – Summer Charity Ball was conducted in association with Hope for the Children Charity at The Hotel Conrad.

5th July 2016
Art of Story Telling – Event conducted by our member Mr. Chetan Shetty at The Poona Club.

24th August 2016
BBG AGM and General Body meeting was conducted at The Central Park Hotel. The Key note speaker for the evening was Bakthiar Dadabhoy the present Divisional Railway Manager.

25th October 2016
Tarun Sharma was our key note presenter and our member for our event who conducted a session for our members on Digitization of Industries in Future at The Central Park Hotel.

17th November 2016
A panel discussion was conducted on Post Brexit for our guests which included panelists from Rolls Royce- Kishore Jayaraman, Kirloskar Brothers- Sanjay Kirloskar, Pixel Image – Catriona Smith and Deputy British High Commissioner- Kumar Iyer.

January 2017
One of members Pentagraph organized a session at the O Hotel – India an island of peace in Turmoil. This session focused on the impact of Demonetization and its effect on Business.

February 2017
In association with BBG -Chevening Alumni Pune organized an event at the MCCIA Pune. Vandana Chavan MP, and EX Mayor of Pune a Chevening scholar herself was the key note speaker.

February 2017
Another Event was organized by our members Anand Rathi Associates in association with BBG, an interactive session with Feroze Azeez Deputy CEO Rathi Associates on Financial Strategy, Economy and Business Outlook at The Westin Hotel.

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BBG Pune's annual charity Gala Ball in aid of ECF

Poonam Kochar with the winning guest
The British Business Group Pune’s Annual Charity Ball was held on February 23 at Hyatt Regency in aid of Equal Community Foundation.

‘Licensed to Thrill’ was the theme for the evening. Over 300 guests attended the charity ball. Hyatt Regency Pune, Virgin Atlantic were the platinum and gold sponsors for the evening respectively. A stay at Grand Hyatt Dubai and dinner at Zuma Dubai, stay at a luxury villa in countryside of southern coast of Sri Lanka, stay at Taj Lake Palace Udaipur and a holiday at Kipling Camp were some of the prizes up for grabs at the auction. A silent auction and sale of raffle tickets followed the grand auction. All items were donated by local businesses and supporters.

The ball brought together a fantastic mix of people, amazing prizes, delicious food and drinks, casino tables. To top it all the guests danced to the music played by DJ Abhishek Mantri.

Guests demonstrated immense support knowing the fact that money was going for a good cause. Proceeds from the event will be directed to Equal Community Foundation, whose work seems like the need of the hour. ECF works with men to end violence and discrimination against women. ECF is working across 20 low-income communities in Pune through their programme Action for Equality (AfE). It costs approximately Rs 2lakhs to run AfE in one community for a year. Till date, over 660 men have graduated from AfE. Last year, over 61% women associated with the graduates of the programme reported experiencing reduction in the violence and discrimination they faced. ECF already has plans to take their work outside of Pune and have launched two programmes - Research and Development Programme and the Man Up India Campaign. So, the funds raised from the event will go a long way.

The British Business Group Pune and Equal Community Foundation are grateful to the committed and creative group of executive committee members who planned the ball; to all volunteers, to all businesses and individuals who sponsored the event or donated items to the silent and live auctions and raffle prizes; and to many individuals for pledging towards ECF’s monthly giving programme.

Photographs from the ball can be found on
http://www.flickr.com/photos/63001166@N06/sets/72157632986638338/

If you would like to know more about ECF’s work please visit www.ecf.org.in or send an email to info@ecf.org.in

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Britain - Ensuring she is India's partner of choice' - says Peter Beckingham at BBG's 6th AGM Guest of Honour, Peter Beckingham - Deputy High Commissioner - British High Commission in Mumbai addressing the BBG Pune AGM on 19th April at Le Meridien.

The British Business Group - Pune held their 6th Annual General Meeting on 19th April 2012 at LE Meridien hotel, sponsored by Arthtech Consultants. It was a very well attended AGM where the Guest of Honour was Peter Beckingham - Deputy High Commissioner - British High Commission in Mumbai.

Peter Beckingham spoke to the members on- " Britain - Ensuring She is India's Partner of Choice "

" Signs of UK economy recovering a little with slight improvement on GBP of 0.7%, this is where Indian colleagues worry about their 7%GDP not high enough " , points out Peter.

Peter also mentioned that India is one of the highest investor in UK, where Tata Steel are planning to invest £800million in Port Talbot, to make that facility one of the very best in the world. And the TATA JLR JV is thriving.

The UK government is trying very hard to recover quickly and taking firm actions, i.e the Bureaucrats have not received any pay reviews for the past two years and a recalculation in their pensions means that they will be deducted up to 5% more, in effect getting a pay cut.

This is how hard the UK government is trying. He also mentioned that the retrospective tax which is being discussed by the finance minister here will have a drastic effect on companies trying to invest in India, elaborating on Vodafone as an example and their trip to the supreme court.

" There are many opportunities to grow our relationship further and this is where BBG Pune have helped the local companies ", concluded Peter on a positive note.

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