Two Weeks Before Diwali, 300 of India’s Founders, Investors and Creators Filled The Quorum for the First Diwali Gathering by The Charter

The nomination-based membership that was Bombay Founders’ Club until July held its first festive evening under the new name on Saturday, 24 October — in collaboration with The Quorum and fifteen partner brands. On 28th October, Diwali came two weeks early for a particular slice of Mumbai on Saturday night, when more than 300 founders, investors and creators filled The Quorum for the Diwali Gathering by The Charter. It was the first festive evening the membership has held since it took its new name in July, and it was organised in collaboration with The Quorum, the members’ club that had also hosted The Signing on 11 July — the night Bombay Founders’ Club became The Charter.

Who Was in the Room

The guest list was not published, but the shape of the room was plain to anyone standing in it. Partners from the venture firms that fund a large share of what gets built in this country stood at the same bar as the founders they have backed and a few they have passed on alongside family office principals, second-time founders between companies, and the creators whose audiences now decide which new brands get noticed. Nothing had been scheduled for them to sit through. The evening was given over to the conversations, which began at the door and were still going at one in the morning.

Inside the Evening

Reeh, Elra and The Perfumatory ran a Get Ready With Me room that opened before the bar did, and it became the place where much of the room first met. The bar was built with Tigerfire, Third Eye Distillery’s Stranger & Sons, Lost & Found and Otherside, Miho and Tipsy Tabby, with Malaki and Pop Zero alongside.

The mithai came from Cocoa & Katli, the company founded by Harsh Kedia — known as A Diabetic Chef before he turned to mithai — and Arihant Jain. Every guest left with a gift bag from Ziaho, Relow, Ruskle and Cocoa & Katli.

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The partners for the evening: The Quorum, Tigerfire, Third Eye Distillery (Stranger & Sons, Lost & Found and Otherside), Miho, Tipsy Tabby, Malaki, Pop Zero, Cocoa & Katli, Ziaho, Ruskle, Relow, Reeh, Elra and The Perfumatory.

“Nobody Is Working the Room”

“Every founder I know spends Diwali week going from one party to the next and comes home having met nobody they will call on Monday,” said Devarsh Saraf, founder and CEO of The Charter. “We wanted to give the people we care about one evening that was the opposite of that. A room full of people whose work you already respect, where nobody is working the room because everyone in it has already been let in.”

From Bombay Founders’ Club to The Charter

The Charter began as Bombay Founders’ Club, which grew from six founders around a table in Mumbai into a membership across Mumbai, Pune, Delhi and Bangalore, before taking its new name at The Signing on 11 July — followed by evenings in Bangalore on 19 July and Delhi on 25 July.

Entry is by nomination, and new members, called Signatories, sign a written charter on induction. Unchartered, which runs alongside it, is an application-based membership for founders in the first act of building — and the road by which many of them will eventually be nominated.