KamalKitchen

#ZenMeetup – Asus comes to Pune

by

The evening of August 9 saw a bunch of bloggers and influencers converge at the Le Meridien Pune for an exclusive event. Asus has taken the mobile market in India by storm in barely a year. Their market share and growth is indeed phenomenal. So far, they have organized many glitzy blogger events in metros like Delhi and Mumbai. So I was glad to hear that they were finally coming to Pune.

#ZenMeetup

People checking out Asus features before event starts

Considering that Saif Ali Khan was present at one of their events in Delhi, and Sonakshi Sinha graced the event in Mumbai a couple of days ago, the Pune event was pretty low key. But I am happy that there was an event in Pune. I am going to be positive and take it as a good sign. Maybe this will encourage other brands to choose our good old punya nagari for similar events.

#ZenMeetup

Continuing the latest trend, Peter Chang, the MD of Asus India addressed the crowd. We had some brief presentations of the various features of all their latest phones. There were some fun activities and contests.

In the first round, participants made up skits and songs about the phone’s best features, trying to ‘sell’ the phone to Asus. Then there was a selfie contest. Don’t think obsessing over selfies is just a girl thing. The teams competing for the best selfie were made up of guys, and you just had to see them pout and pose. It was hilarious and gave us some light moments to liven up the evening. #ZenMeetup All the phones were displayed and we got to check them out. The food at the Meridien was perfect as expected. I think everyone was feeling the hunger pangs by the time the event ended because everyone dug in with gusto.  


Since this is a food blog, I just have to mention the food :), although I didn’t take any photos because I was busy eating. Veg Manchurian and Spring Rolls competed with cheese chili toast for us vegetarians. The spring rolls were the kind I like, with a lightly seasoned filling – perfect! I am not too keen on the current trend of soy sauce laden spring roll filling, as I told the chef.

The carnivores had some fish fingers, chicken tikka and drumsticks to gorge on. Piping hot gulab jamuns and vanilla ice cream satisfied the sweet tooth. The menu was simple but it hit the spot. It was actually conventional food, the kind of ‘restaurant food’ we loved in the 90s. And for some reason, the Chili Cheese Toast always reminds me of breakfast on the Pune-Mumbai Deccan Queen.

As an entrepreneur and small business owner, I always admire any new brand’s success story. And as a professional blogger, it is interesting to watch how Asus is leveraging the blogging community and social media to build their brand.

I am glad I was part of this event. And as a blogger, I would like to say something to my fellow Pune bloggers. It doesn’t matter what your blog is about – food, fashion, travel, tech, home décor etc. – we need to come together and show our strength so that more big brands come here for events like this.

Thanks to Asus for a wonderful evening!