Event Industry Knows How To Ride Through Tumultuous Times
The Year 2023, termed as “Amrit Kaal”, started on a high note for me as BusinessMint decided to declare me The Nationwide Awards Under 30 Emerging Industry Experts - 2023 under the Emcee category. As overwhelming as it may seem, I can’t help but reflect back to 2022 and what transpired for me in getting this award. First of all, we all should be very thankful to 2022 for reviving the event industry after two horrific years of the pandemic. We got ourselves out of the tiny rectangular boxes on a Computer screen to huge seminar halls, event grounds and big stages. The last event that I did at the conclusion of 2022 was a campaign called “Conquer with Courage” by Mountain Dew. When I look at it in hindsight that is what all of us have been doing. As unorganised as it may be termed, the event industry finds its way to conquer these challenges with courage so it won’t be wrong if I keep it as a theme for this article.
Being a freelance anchor who is not associated with any agency, I have a lot of calendar time with me on any normal day but the pandemic made those gaps even longer. For instance, I did an award show for Red Fm in Mysore. Then I went to Mumbai to host on behalf of Steadfast at IHFF in the second half of 2021 when the markets started opening up, a slow and steady start to say the least, but 2022 saw a rapid rise, with industry leaders like BW BusinessWorld, Exito Media, Exchange4Media bringing in a variety of events, be it awards, summits or conferences. Concerts and fashion shows started to stand again after the shock of covid, Marathons and campaigns started seeing an increase in crowd, and annual functions seemed more rejuvenating because of the enthusiasm of people participating. I definitely call myself fortunate to have hosted a bunch of these myself and felt the joy of audience up close personally. When You eventfully decided to organise their food & music festival in Bangalore, ArtistConnect reached out to me and asked if I’d like to host it, I agreed to doing it because a majority of youth likes to visit these festivals and it’s always good to understand a generation younger then yourself. I like to keep a balance of youthful fun & mature thought process, so it’s fun for me to host various kinds of conferences and summits as well. In 2022 itself, I hosted Festival of Fintech (a summit with Finance Gurus of some huge brands of India), Pitch CMO Summit (a summit of marketing geniuses of various industries and an opportunity to learn how innovation plays a huge role in marketing), Digital Transformation Summit (where people from both Government & Non-Government sectors talked why going digital is the way forward for companies and why it is viable as well), Unicorn Summit (wherein various experts talked about India being the next big thing of startup ecosystem) which were organised by BW Disrupt, e4m, Exito Media and BW Businessworld respectively.
With all the respect I could muster I’d say that I have never been fond of corporate jobs, that’s why when I get to do team building or employee engagement with corporate people during offsites, annual functions or any special occasion, I make it a point to include them thoroughly in activities, by their own self. This might be the reason I hosted annual event for one of the largest container shipping companies Maersk in Mumbai. Acko doesn’t need an introduction for people who are aware of the happenings in the startup ecosystem, I hosted their in-office engagement event Ackletics 2022 for them along with musical evening. In fact, my association with Acko goes way back to 2018 ever since they celebrated their first annual function. I think they do like my work, I’d give myself the benefit of being optimistic here. I was the host at Excon 2022 for Ajax, it was nice for a change being among different kind of heavy machineries, appreciating the magic and talent of engineering.
Also, the gods of social media, or algorithms, the way that people like to call it, have been kind to me. My social media has grown multifold this year, Instagram saw 5x increase from 50k to 250k followers, while Youtube monetized my channel after the audience watched my content for around 10000 hours in 2022. The virtual infotainment show that I manifested in an interview with Experiential Everything earlier in 2021 has a name now, The Weekly with ChoubeyJi, it is running into its second season and with the love of audience, it has garnered more than 300k views collectively.
My birthday month December has been the busiest for me with to and fro travels from base in Bangalore to Mumbai and Delhi. First time in India, Mountain Dew dedicated a Legend Pedestal for every human who has conquered with courage and yes every human has done it.
We have overcome many years of hardships and these last 2 years were harder and we all are legends in the end. Because survival is the game, even if it was my survival in the cold weather of Delhi, standing in the freezing cold, yet maintaining my regular voice, interacting with the crowd and entertaining them.
The youth energy I see in India is absolutely fantastic, their passion must be nourished and encouraged. This is the reason Make in India is growing at a rapid pace. As a British gentleman rightly said, “The Indian Express has left the station. It is now the fastest train in the world—the fastest-growing major economy in the world”. On this positive note, wish you all a very progressive 2023 and after. Let’s keep the nation growing, cheers!
(Anupam Anand is an Emcee and a Host)
