Nearly a hundred members of The Indus Entrepreneurs and others called on President A P J Abdul Kalam at the Rashtrapati Bhavan in New Delhi on Wednesday evening.

The delegation included businessmen, thinkers, entrepreneurs and even Hindi film industry personnel. Led by Saurabh Srivastava, president, TiE New Delhi, and Rajeev Shah, secretary, information technology ministry, they met the President to discuss TiE's vision of India as a centre for innovation and ways to achieve it.

"We had invited the President to come, participate in, and inaugurate the conference," Srivastava told rediff.com "But he was busy. However, since he was keen to meet TiE members, we arranged for a meeting in the evening."

The delegation left for Rashtrapati Bhavan in three buses at 1815 IST and met the President 45 minutes later. The meeting lasted a little over an hour.

The delegation was served tea, coffee and snacks that included samosas, cutlets and jalebis.

Among the TiE members were Rajat Gupta, CEO, McKinsey Worldwide; Kanwal Rekhi, TiE founder-member; Naresh Trehan, executive director, Escorts Heart Institute; Alfred Berkeley, president, Nasdaq; and Ken Wilcox, president and CEO, Silicon Valley Bank.

The surprises in the delegation were film-maker Subhash Ghai and actress Mahima Choudhary. They had earlier participated in a session on 'entrepreneurship in media and entertainment' organised by the TiE.

"The President is keen on science and technology and is most enthusiastic on meeting people who have a vision of how India can become a knowledge society," explained a senior executive of Hughes Network and a member of TiE.

In their presentation, the TiE representatives explained how the organisation works and briefed the President about the various sessions that were part of the TiE conference held at the Maurya Sheraton earlier in the day.

"Both of us -- the TiE members and the President -- felt that we have the human and natural resources as well as the talent needed to grow into a centre of innovation. And for that we feel that we need to set our goals really high. The meeting with the President was useful because we felt we had a synergy in our vision," said Srivastava.

TiE plans to send a note to the President later on the important points that emerged from its conference along with ideas on how India can do better. In turn, President Kalam said he will follow the organisation's activities closely and try to participate in some future conferences.