Inside the final splutter of startup conferences

There is a kind of gloom that Indian engineers do not perceive, as though it is the nuance of a girl. The gloom is in plain sight, like a Monday, it is in the ugliness of serious objects, in the failed playfulness of office spaces, in the way water bottles are arranged at conferences, in the dullness of corporate purpose. Indian engineers are not infected by it probably because they are vaccinated in their youth by strong doses of despair, a college life spent in ugly industrial towns and a long numbing preparation for the grim business of life.

The fume of mild sorrow, perhaps perceivable only to humanities graduates, is in the ballroom of the bleak business hotel on the outer edge of Bengaluru, where "Unpluggd" that has been promoted as "India's Biggest Start-up Conference" is underway. The fact is that the conference is evidently low key. Most of the 400 people in the room are software product managers. Among them there are six women.

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