‘Industry has come a long way in event tech but there are challenges ahead’

Event technology has evolved immensely over the years but still has a long way to go. At the e4m RedCarpet Experiential Marketing Summit 2023, industry leaders got in a conversation with Chehneet Kaur, Senior Correspondent, exchange4media, to discuss where the challenges lie, what the opportunities are, and what the future course of event tech looks like.

Naveen Gupta, Founder, Spalba, who has also been an event planner since 20 years opines the evolution of experiential marketing has been very very slow, its rather negligible. There is nothing that one can use on an everyday basis. It can be a Google drive or MS office but there is no platform that we use on a daily basis.

“Event Tech is something where it facilitates or provides you things so the friction is removed, to make things faster so you save time and saving time is saving money. That's how things happen, so technically in the last 20-30 years the evolution is very slow,” he added.

Ankur Kalra, Founder and CEO at Vibgyor Group agreed with Gupta completely that the fraternity is at a sub-zero point and there's lots of work to be done.

There are three basic audiences as far as an event is concerned, according to Kalra. One is of course the event organizer, one is the client or the sponsor, the one who's putting the money and the third is the consumer, the person who's experiencing it. The job of event tech is to make all three experiences amazing. As far as the organizer is concerned, how is it that we can heighten their experience? For the consumer, how can we make the experience immersive?

“The larger problem is we use event tech for the sake of event tech and that is where the disconnect happens. The client sometimes says ‘Add anything related to AR or VR’ and that is how event tech is unfortunately practised in our business,” added the Vibgyor executive.

Ganesh Paney, Co-Founder, Tech XP claimed that he has a little differing opinion. He said, “My view is that we've really come a long way in event tech. If you really look at what used to happen 20 years back to what is happening now is very different.”

But he also believes everything is a continuum and it's not the same for everybody. There are certain clients who are doing certain kinds of events and then there are certain other clients who are doing very evolved things.

When it comes to challenges or the probable reasons why India has not utilised its full potential when it comes to event tech, it’s more about the adoption and more about the ecosystem, the Spalba executive said.

Gupta added, “Why do we go to Silicon Valley to do a start-up? because the environment is there, the system is there. Talking about India, I have not seen the government doing much for the event managers or planners or the experiential industry.”

An event planner’s job is the sixth most stressful job in the world according to a Forbes study, Gupta stated. The others on the list are pilot, firefighter, neurosurgeon, soldier, and doctor.

“The process to make their jobs more efficient, more friction-free has to be there and the mindset has to be developed. That mindset has not developed yet,” he said.

For the event tech business, Kalra believes that Covid was the biggest blessing even though it is an unfortunate truth. Event tech has reached the scale from 0 to 100.

There were so many technologies that started being adopted, Zoom events started happening. Digitally the entire event tech adoption went up maybe 20 folds. But yes, there have to be early adopters, people who are pioneers in technology,” he added.

Now in the offline world, there are two things, the capability and intent to spend. When it comes to capabilities, India can do the same things at a fraction of a cost. But how many people in India would spend that kind of money? Maybe not more than one or two like Mr Ambani or Adani, explained Kalra.

According to Pandey, there are two types of challenges that still exist. One is the environmental challenge because all humans are social animals so we crave social interactions and in person interactions.

“The other challenge also is the fact that event tech has not evolved is also why it hasn’t evolved. There aren't enough players, the technology that is available is not at par which will force open the doors of utilisation,” the Tech XP executive added.

Speaking of top trends, Pandey observed Generative AI and ChatGPT are the two things a few event agencies use, to generate some content and visuals. Further AR/VR and data science are other buzzwords of the industry as of now.

“Whatever makes an immersive experience is going to be the future. Whether that is through a device or through Google Glasses or through sitting in front of a curved screen, the whole thing is about being immersive. It’s also all about creating data which helps the other two communities whether it's the organisers or it's the clients. A combination of these two things is what the future holds,” shared Kalra.

As per Gupta, the camaraderie is very good among the industry players. Secondly, experiential marketing within the entire marketing gamut has gained a considerable amount of traction. People do not believe in ads as much as they believe in a live event now.

Thirdly, right now the growth that the country is seeing is phenomenal. Brands like Apple are starting up their manufacturing unit, Tesla is still working on it. There are a lot of brands investing into our country.

“5 to 10 years down the line, the growth is not going to be 10x but rather 100x,” concluded Gupta.