ET Startup Awards: When 'Start Me Up' band got the audience grooving post awards

What happens when you get four hotshots from the startup world together? Some would say another startup.

On Saturday evening, ET did just that and what came out was an hour of pure, pulsating classic rock. Soon after the award for the Startup of the Year was handed out, four gentlemen — Rahul Tadimalla, Founding Partner at RSVP Capital Advisors, Debjeet Basu, Director Sales, Ola, Jishnu Dasgupta, Director, at Windowseat Communications and Ishwar Sundararaman, Cofounder and CEO, Furdo.com – took to the stage.

With Tadimalla on the keyboards, Basu on lead guitar, Dasgupta on bass and Sundararaman on the drums, the band which called itself Start Me Up was ready to roll.

What made their virtuoso performance so special was the fact that these startup-rockstars had never played together on stage before. However, this wasn’t the first time they had shared space together.

On April 21, this year, in ET’s Bengaluru edition’s Namma Bengaluru page, two of them figured in a story about how folks in the startup ecosystem were managing their hectic lives and schedules along with their thriving music careers. And from that piece came the germ of the idea of getting a bunch of dynamic startup professionals to perform at the awards ceremony which recognised the best in Indian entrepreneurship.

Keeping in line with the spirit of innovation and joy of creation that drives Indian startups, the quartet collaborated to turn ideas into reality. Several hours of jamming after work, the newly formed band was ready to play.

On awards night, they rolled out the classics – Mustang Sally, Take It Easy, Proud Mary, Born To Be Wild and many more. “The music performance at the ET Startup Awards this year was a great show.

While on one hand, there was a formal aspect to the show, the band’s performance added an informality, where everyone let their hair down in an informal setting, networking and enjoying the music.

What was even better that the show was performed by professionals from the startup world,” said K Ganesh, serial entrepreneur. As the evening wore on, the audience couldn’t get enough of the band. And as they drawled ‘Keep your eyes on the road, your hands upon the wheel,’ from The Doors classic Roadhouse Blues-for the second time on popular demand we knew, that it’s a journey that is well begun.