Kishore Singh: Blue Label for the blues

The company of millionaires, or billionaires, even if they’re “friends”, can be pretty daunting, especially if they’re liberal about sharing their bottomlines following a swig, or two, or three, of $650 JW Blue Label — “only for special occasions”, wink-nudge-wink — given that they usually peg their whiskies “at $200 a bottle, max”. They might spring $3,000 for a special label of cognac, but given Delhi’s unfortunate slumming with Black Label as the ultimate lifestyle arbiter, they have had to “train down” their palates to keep company with their less fortunate friends. It’s a cruel toss up, but I’m happy to report, based on my findings of the previous evening, that most will not trade their friendships even if they have to subsist on less than Gold Label.

If only Black Label was in evidence last evening, I have to say that the group also made short shrift of Glenfiddich and Jack Daniels at about the same time they began to share their prospects of “doing business together”. Bonhomie there might have been, but when it came to laying their financial cards on the table, they were as sharp as they were sure.

“I need” — need, mind you, not want — “to start an airline,” said one, outlining the prospects of a full-fledged carrier, not just a private jet or two to fly around, so who was willing to come on to the table with him? Hands went up, quick calculations were made, financers identified, a kitty of Rs 500 crore planned. “No problem,” said the one promising to bring in the venture capitalist, “my friend is flush with cash these days.” Names of other investors were whispered, discussed, tossed around, and all but the contract was inked by midnight; had a lawyer been present, they might have had that out of the way too, and who knows, some bubbly might have been popped.

Nor was that the only business that was born that evening. The group traded properties like packets of chips: “I’ll sell you my Dubai penthouse in exchange for your London villa,” said the NRI investor. “I’m bored with property,” exclaimed a Botox-ed lady, “if somebody gives me Rs 150 crore, they can have all of mine, and I’ll shift into a hotel suite. But,” she warned, “I’m not giving my carpets away, nor,” she warmed up, “my furniture, or my art — and not my Mumbai flat, and I can’t sell the Gurgaon duplex. In fact,” she said, “I don’t think I’ll sell now but, because the market is in a slump, maybe I’ll go property hunting to add to my inventory.”

By the time the evening was out, though, a lot had been finalised: The shoe exporter had tied up with the property developer to start a domestic retail chain of pet stores; the fashionista-would-be brand ambassador and promoter for a line of watches to be designer-branded in Switzerland especially for the Indian market; a tikka-takeaway with a toll-free number was to be launched nationwide; and by the time dinner was laid, the airline entrepreneur was already selling his stake in it to invest the returns in a Bollywood-Hollywood congolomerate, while the property developer had honed in on Pondicherry to build a bigger, glitzier Las Vegas by the Indian Ocean.

Since my wife and I were less participants and more observers in this entrepreneurship-in-the-time-of-recession, we did the numbers and came up with an astonishing Rs 30,000 crore worth of business conducted over a couple of bottles of Black Label. “Let’s see how much of it transforms into deals tomorrow,” said my wife. “I’m not sure of the deals,” I wagered, “but I’m betting on some nasty hangovers.”