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Single Malt & Co. Bar and Lounge at Hyatt Regency Pune
This bar is really the place to be in, when business calls you to Pune. The location of the bar within the hotel premises has been done in such a manner that it entices you from the moment you step inside. As the name suggests, the bar serves a connoisseur’s selection of aged single malt whiskies and other liquors, wines, beers and cocktails from all around the world. The lounge is elegantly done up, and also serves a round-the-clock dining and snack menu, specialty teas, coffees and light snacks.
The best point of this bar is that you can actually have a serious meeting here, without loud music jarring your sensibilities. The ambience is one of calmness and the mellow drinks helps in making this a favorite meeting place for entrepreneurs living in Pune and those who travel to this city on business. The bar is open daily from noon to midnight. The lounge is open 24 hours.

Encounters at Taj Krishna, Hyderabad
Taj Krishna, located at Banjara Hills, a prime residential area of the city, is nestled amidst beautifully landscaped gardens. And Encounters serves as a beautiful setting for your quick business meetings. The all-day dining restaurant offers buffet meals as well as an al a carte menu showcasing global favorites.
It has an interactive counter that serves pastas, pizzas, dosas and pancakes. It is open 24 hours. Apart from Encounters, Taj Krishna’s fully equipped business center also has all the facilities that you may need. Equipment like TV, DVD, video coverage, audio recording, audio cassette, LCD, OHP, 3m OHP, 35mm slide projector, masked screen and cordless mike are available on rent. The board room I can seat 15 persons for a tariff of Rs.15,000 plus taxes; while board room II can seat 10 persons at a tariff of Rs.10,000 plus taxes per session.

Le Pain Quotidien, Mumbai
The name of this café means “the daily bread” in French but the meeting place scores quite high in the Indian context. Le Pain Quotidien is a thriving community of more than 150 bakery-cafés throughout the world, and is enjoyed in neighborhoods in over 19 countries. Apart from the wide choice of breads here, the café also serves soups, salads, tartines, entrées, desserts, homemade drinks, beers and wines. The menu includes many vegetarian items.
It is open throughout the day for breakfast, lunch and dinner, and offers takeout items. It is open all days a week, from 8 am to 11:30 pm.
Le Pain Quotidien’s rustic, farmhouse atmosphere is conducive to quick business meetings. You may not want to join in the long, antique-style communal table that encourages a relaxed, informal atmosphere, but there are enough seats where you are guaranteed some privacy if you are having an important meeting with a client or a quick brainstorming session with your team.
The café also scores highly on location, Dhanraj Mahal being a heritage building near the Gateway of India, in Colaba.
The area, a bustling shopping hub well-known for its art galleries and British-influenced architecture, provides the perfect setting for Le Pain Quotidien.

Seagull at Vivanta by Taj –Fisherman’s Cove
This multi-cuisine restaurant and coffee shop offers Continental, Chinese cuisine as well as coastal favorites from the region. Seagull is popular with entrepreneurs, thanks to its open, interactive kitchens and inside/outside dining that overlooks the pool. A must-try is the salmon grain bread here. Another USP here is the World Street Eats buffet every Saturday for dinner that comprise street food from the Mediterranean, Orient and more, paired
with Indian beer. This buffet is priced at Rs.1,050 plus tax per person.

Greatroom at Pune Marriott Hotel and Convention Center
The Marriott greatroom is really the hotel lobby, but it serves as the perfect meeting place for entrepreneurs. The hotel understands this too, and the comfortable seating arrangements and clustered sofas help create the mood. There is a bar at the far end, leading on to a restaurant, and the high, high ceiling and spacious interiors of the greatroom all add to make this one of India’s best meeting places. This hotel also boasts of the Pune Baking Company, which is also located at one end of the greatroom. This deli has a number of gourmet sandwiches and patisseries as well as a range of other food products. Bar 101 is another popular spot in the hotel, and offers an extensive collection of 101 whisky accompanied by premium cigars in its elegant lounge setting.

The Dome, Le Royal Meridien, Chennai
Step into Le Royal Meridien Chennai and you are sure to be floored by the spacious lobby which also overlooks the hotel’s outdoor pool and ornamental garden. You will find small groups of people or a solitary entrepreneur busy with their iPads or deep in discussion in various seats of the 52-cover area. The Dome is the bar and serves coffee too, and is located on one end of this grand lobby. Though the bar services do not extend to the entire lobby (just a few seats immediately outside The Dome are served), the entire lobby is a great place to catch up for a quick tete-a-tete. Though the hotel management is quite firm that it doesn’t allow entrepreneurs to conduct interviews or full-blown meetings in the lobby, this area remains busy throughout the day. There is a separate coffee shop, Cilantro, which is also located at the lobby level, apart from the business center, the boardroom and the separate VIP boardroom. The tariff for hiring the boardrooms is Rs.2,000 plus taxes per hour with basic amenities like tea/coffee, stationery etc thrown in with the package.

Koshy’s, Bengaluru
Located on St. Marks Road, this old-timer is still the favorite of entrepreneurs when in Bengaluru. It is over 60 years old, and has achieved an almost venerated status in this city. The coffee served here is wonderful, so is the atmosphere which is surprisingly conducive to a quick business meeting too. It even won the MTV Most Stylish Place award some years back. The location is ideal and the feeling of nostalgia that many people have for Koshy’s makes it a popular coffee bar in the city.

Threesixtyone at The Oberoi, Gurgaon
This all-day dining world cuisine restaurant is one of the largest in the country with a seating capacity of 210. The tables are not too closely placed, so that you are always assured of some privacy when you hold a quick meeting here. It has five show kitchens offering Japanese, Chinese, Italian and Indian cuisine. It also has a live patisserie. Two teakwood decks extend from the restaurant into the 36,000 square foot reflection pool offering an al fresco dining experience. There are other areas of the hotel which are also conducive to quick and, perhaps, more informal meetings. The Piano Bar offers an extensive selection of beverages with vintage wines, signature martinis, mojitos and margarita. You can also check out the Cigar Lounge, which offers a wide selection of single malts and a wide range of hand-rolled Cuban cigars.

Lobby Lounge at Hyatt Regency Chennai
This hotel is a relatively new entrant to the city. You cannot miss the fact that it is located right next to the Kalaignar TV office on Chennai’s Anna Salai in the Teynampet area. The central lobby of the hotel boasts of a wonderful and airy atrium. Eye-catching installations of beehives adorn the entire hotel. Open 24 hours, the Lobby Lounge is a residential-style lounge located amongst the lush green landscaping and serene water features of the hotel lobby. Here, you can have a quick business meeting in comfort and will also be assured of privacy thanks to the space between the tables.
You can also check out the hotel’s 24-hour business center, which offers video and teleconferencing equipment, secretarial services, dedicated reception desk and workstations providing high-speed internet access (Wi-Fi).

Bricklane at Express Sarovar Portico, Surajkund
This hotel is located conveniently in Surajkund, which though is in New Delhi, still manages to be nestled away from the hustle and bustle of India’s capital city. Bricklane, the all-day dining multicuisine restaurant here, is quite popular with business travelers to New Delhi. Here, the tables are spaced enough apart from one another to ensure some privacy for a quick business meeting. Since the breakfast and dinners are buffets all days of the week, it makes it simpler to host a small business delegation here, without having to bother about individual tastes and preferences while ordering food, which helps a lot, especially when you are dealing with nitpicking clients. Apart from the
restaurant, the Sarovar property has five fully air-conditioned rooms and business center with all amenities, AV support, private board room, stationery and video conferencing facilities. The charges for hiring Summit I, which can accommodate 14 persons, is Rs.12,000, while Summit II’s day charge is Rs.20,000. It can accommodate 16-40 persons.

Two One Two, Mumbai
Two One Two Bar and Grill scores heavily thanks to its location: a leafy, serene lane in Mumbai’s upscale Worli area. Go in for a meal in the afternoon or evening, you will always find this restaurant filled with a number of entrepreneurs holding either quick meetings or having an impromptu brainstorming session. With a capacity of over 120 covers, the restaurant has a private dining area if you wish for more privacy to host your meeting. The wine list is extensive; the food is paired well.

Café Piano at Grand Bhagwati, Ahmedabad
This hotel is located in the bustling SG Highway of Ahmedabad, and is always full of business travelers and tourists alike. Apart from the meeting rooms and banqueting facilities that the hotel provides, its café is also very popular among its clientele. The café serves hot beverages as well as a lavish vegetarian buffet, which helps appease the hunger pangs while you negotiate a tricky business deal or catch up with your valued clients.

MoMo Café, Courtyard by Marriott City Centre, Pune
This is the focal point of the hotel, and most hotel guests as well as walk-in guests, eventually make a beehive for this area. MoMo Café is the all-day diner multi-cuisine restaurant and offers its guests a variety of delectable options 24×7. There is an interactive show kitchen with a wood-fire pizza oven. The interiors of the café are brightly lit and full of bright colors. Overlooking the hotel’s pool, this café is full of guests all day long. The hotel also has a restaurant offering Pan-Asian cuisine, Red Zen, which has a community table. When in Pune, you can also check out MoMo 2 Go, the grab & go store which offers an array of sandwiches, pastries, pies, tarts and hot and cold beverages. This is ideal for a light meal and a caffeine rush. You can just pick up your food here and catch up on a quick meeting at the seats arranged thoughtfully at the small and cosy lobby of the hotel.

Peerless Inn, Kolkata
This hotel is one of the old timers of the city. It is quite popular among the city’s entrepreneurs and traveling businessmen as it is located in the prime commercial hub of the city. There are a number of special packages you can choose from if you wish to host a meeting here. The preferential conference buffet lunch rate applicable would be Rs.700 plus taxes and charges as applicable on per person/day/session basis. This package includes buffet lunch, two complimentary times tea/coffee rounds with cookies during conference time.
Writing pad-pencil, mineral water and podium mike as are included in the package. The usage of the hall is levied as per the hall allocation from morning 9 am till 6 pm. The preferential buffet dinner rate applicable is Rs.900 plus taxes as applicable on per person (head)/day/session basis.
This package includes welcome drinks (mocktails) on arrival and buffet dinner, snacks for a circulation of one and a half hours; usage of the hall is levied from 7 pm till 11 pm. Alcohol, if required, is charged extra.
As for the hall rentals, you can hire Summit I and II, Conference I and II, board room for Rs.10,000 plus taxes; Jasmine, Victoria and Chowringhee can be hired for Rs.15,000 plus taxes. Another dining area of the hotel which is quite popular is Oceanic, the hotel’s 24-hour coffee shop cum multicuisine  restaurant.

©Entrepreneur October 2011

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