Today T.I.C. has successfully completed 23 years in the industry and I owe it all to my experimentation with new concepts, learnings from experiences and of course the dedicated and hard working team members I have had till date.
Although T.I.C. is 23 years old, my relationship with the industry dates back to my school days. It was in my school days itself when I was able to bring to life the concept of getting sponsors for events, which no one else was doing at that time, as this was the time event ‘industry’ was in its inception period.
My interest in organizing school events moved to college and its then when I realized my strong passion for creating events and therefore decided not to enter into my family business. I took the risk of venturing into an industry which was not even recognized. However I also knew the fact that if you are convinced with your thoughts and have the ability to make people see that your dreams hold possibilities, there is no way that you will not succeed.
I always remembered this thought especially during my initial days as an event manager where I faced tremendous difficulties in setting up the business. However I held on to this philosophy and successfully laid the first foundation of T.I.C. I pledged that whether I earn a lot of money or not, whether I become a corporate honcho or not, I will always stick to doing what I enjoyed most, which was events. That’s how T.I.C. was born and its tagline ‘Fun @ Work’ came in existence.
In its foundation year itself, I introduced ‘Cornucopia’, India’s first talent hunt show. The idea came from my experience in schools where music was a rage but the budding singers did not have a platform to showcase their talent. The idea for the event was also originated from the fact that brands were also looking for innovative options to promote their company and products to the school audience. Thus, I decided to capitalize on the situation and made these brands my sponsors.
In the year 1998, we introduced Dell Direct and Michael Dell, its owner, to India. The event was organized at a large scale and for the first time in India, we used surface projections on a curved dome structure to introduce Michael Dell.
Year after year since then, we delivered innovative concepts that elevated the standards of events in the country, be it India’s first ever fund raiser event or introducing a brand in form of a 3D live e-puppet, be it India’s first musical Broadway to introduce a range of heavy commercial vehicles or India’s first promotional remix music troupe/group in place of celebrities for an Integrated launch campaign. Be it South-east Asia’s biggest MICE movement or India’s first ever Truck Racing championship, T.I.C. has always taken pride in walking the road less travelled.
And as today as I write this memoir on what brought me success, the only reason for that I can think of is T.I.C bringing innovation in everything we organized. Every event was a new learning for us and from every mistake we only improvised. The trait, which we rigorously follow at T.I.C, is to accept mistakes. Not just rectify them but also see how we can overcome the challenges the next time.
When I started T.I.C. all I wanted to do was to bring to life innovative concepts and thoughts. Make people see and feel things beyond their imaginations and that is something which still remains my success mantra till date. I fervently believe that if you as an event manager can bring to life imagination coupled with surprises, you can win anything be it a client brief or an audience’s trust. I believe that you should not follow success, instead do the kind of work that makes success follow you. At T.I.C. we never bother about the scale of the event. Instead what energizes us the most are the exciting things we can do with the event.
