A journey of a small-town boy, selling shoes then, and now trying to change the way events are planned and executed.
Love me or hate me, but I have worked very hard, sincerely and diligently.
I always dreamt of doing something big, big in technology.
My Hometown Agra is a small and pretty famous city on the banks of river Yamuna. The city is famous for its most prized monument — The Taj Mahal, a mausoleum which was built in the memory of its then ruler’s wife Mumtaz Mahal, Taj Mahal is actually designated as a UNESCO World Heritage Site.
Why I am telling you this is also the reason why I left Agra, to fulfil my dreams. Though it’s a boon, Taj Mahal is also a curse on Agra, actually the city is a city of mausoleums, you name it and the greatest of Mughal Emperors are buried over there. Because of the most prized possession — Taj Mahal, it has never developed as a city, progress was always halted by various reasons. I never wanted my dreams to be buried in the city of mausoleums, period.
I was born into a family of businessmen, a family who was for generations into trading and having their own businesses. Our clan is called Mathura-Vaishaya, Vaishya is the third Varna represented by agriculturalists, traders, money lenders, and those involved in commerce, and Mathura is a small city close to Agra. My forefathers shifted to Agra during the reign of The Mughal Emperor Aurangzeb, the atrocities to the Hindu community made the shift.
Again, why I am telling you this is because business was in my blood but the environment was not conducive for businesses and businessmen, hence education became my priority. I completed my graduation, post-graduation and moved to the city of dream, New Delhi (The capital city).
I started working just after my post graduate, and started selling shoes for a big brand, Lakhani Shoes (I was a management trainee and not a cobbler, some confuse my tenure with that :-). Multiple job changes, learnt new things from each of the organisations I worked for and that is what defined me as a working professional I am today.
The dream to start something on my own was always there at the back of my mind, in-fact I tried and started a lot of things while I was in my job, made 4–5 unsuccessful, half-hearted attempts and finally started my Event Management Company in 2009, Its known as We MediaWorks.
We have been successfully running it for last 11 years and are happy to say that we cater to a few of the biggest technology brands in the world. We are small but are known for our delivery, period again :-).
We MediaWorks, an event management company was actually doing great, we were happy. We had offices in India and Singapore and we had good clients and good business in pipeline, but as they say things never go as planned, COVID — 19 happened, the pandemic showed us things that we would have never imagined. Work dried, money dried, people in the system lost faith, people outside the system also lost faith ( Irony and the famous saying…). One thing that kept us alive all through was hope, positivity and self-belief that it ain’t over till it’s over. Who ever said it’s going to be fair? Everything happens for a reason, we just needed to start over, keeping in mind — circumstances don’t limit us, fears do…
From all the crisis that We at We MediaWorks would have gone through in the past, this crisis, we had two new ingredients — uncertainty and distance. No one knows the end of this crisis. Uncertainty is a big element currently. Anyone you talk to, experts or not, or when reading a newspaper, no one knows.’
So for us and myself it was a system reset. Question is how the future would look ? Do we have to think in new models? Are we targeting new buyer types? How can we integrate the new digital platforms? What are we missing?’
Experience economy is the new reality, events and experiences are going to clock USD 2.3 trillion of business by 2026. The question to ponder is that if events are so valuable, then what is stopping the BIG DISRUPTION.
Is “Event Industry” an actual Industry ?
Are we using right amount of technology ?
Are we trying to benefit from the so called “Big Data Revolution” ?
Are“our” so called Industry leaders “leaders” or “laggards” ?
All the above and more questions led us to start Spalba, an event-tech platform, providing full-stack event building capabilities.
Spalba is a SaaS platform that makes events and experiences simple, efficient and data driven for enterprises.
And this is where I am living my dream now, Re-thinking and Re-imagining events, injecting a dose of technology into the system called — Event Industry.
Today, i am proud to say that i run a design company — We MediaWorks and a tech company — Spalba
…to be continued.
… picture abhi baaki hai mere dost…
stay tuned for the next write-up and continuation of the above
Next in line : NOW is the time to Re-Think and Re-Start the Event Industry?
