FOR VIRAF SARKARI, SABBAS JOSEPH, and Andre Timmins, organising Michael Jackson’s tour in November 1996—India’s biggest gig yet—was no moonwalk. Over one lakh fans showed up at a venue that could hold half that number, fake tickets got passed around, and the venue—Mumbai’s Andheri Sports Complex—was wrecked, with broken barricades, uprooted signs, and other detritus of unruly crowds. Earlier, the two jets carrying the star’s crew had been held up at the Mumbai airport for over two hours because local authorities wouldn’t clear the tonnes of equipment they were ferrying. Jackson wanted to enter the stadium in an open-roof vehicle, and who could refuse him? Except that there was no such car available. Anil Ambani ultimately obliged. He lent his Toyota Privera.

The rookies who’d set up Wizcraft International Entertainment nine years earlier had pulled off India’s first live entertainment programme of global scale. Still, it left them broke. Wizcraft had spent more than Rs 5 crore, but earned just Rs 4.5 crore. It had been forced to distribute Rs 1,500 tickets for free, and local politicians had coerced the police to open the gates to the public. Later, the courts froze over Rs 3 crore of Wizcraft’s revenues from the show because consumer rights body Mumbai Grahak Panchayat had filed a case against an entertainment tax exemption given to the show by the state’s BJP-Shiv Sena government. A charity, the Shiv Udyog Sena, was its beneficiary. Wizcraft recently won the case, though the money is yet to come.

The three borrowed, negotiated credit lines with vendors, paid in
instalments over five years, and did odd events, including a couple of high-profile weddings. “Everyone made money except us,” says Timmins, director, Wizcraft. “We couldn’t pay salaries for months.” Almost perversely, however, the concert catapulted Wizcraft to the top. And, today, with around Rs 300 crore in annual revenue, and margins between 14% and 17%, (“We would be happy with 20%, the industry average globally,” says Sarkari, another director) it is India’s biggest and most diversified live entertainment organiser. A few years ago, they built Kingdom of Dreams, a live entertainment park in Gurgaon, which pulls in another Rs 140 crore in revenue.

Viraf Sarkari, director, Wizcraft
Viraf Sarkari, director, Wizcraft

Wizcraft is privately held, mostly by the three founders, who have now lined up Rs 600 crore to fund the expansion of Kingdom of Dreams, in two phases. An underground aquarium, an ice-skating rink, and a kids’ zone will be added to the existing property for Rs 175 crore. The soon-to-open Kingdom of Dreams in Mumbai will swallow another Rs 400 crore in a mixture of equity and debt. The expansion should bring in upwards of Rs 500 crore of incremental revenue, the founders say.

INDIA HAS A HISTORY OF of live entertainment—folk theatre, nautch shows or courtesan performances, street plays, et al. What Wizcraft has done is to invent a more contemporary version of them, giving a Broadway touch. And thereby shaped an entire industry.

It started in 1987, when Sarkari was working in the hotel where Timmins was a DJ. Both would meet at Xanadu then, one of Mumbai’s hottest nightclubs. Many meetings later, the idea of Wizcraft was born. The third Wizcraft director, Joseph, who was then a journalist and frequented the club, soon joined the two. Sarkari was good with creatives, while Timmins was known for his Bollywood networking. Today’s celebrities Farah Khan, Sajid Khan, Javed Jaffrey, and Ravi Behl were young, aspiring dancers when Timmins was at the console. Joseph’s skills were in business development, getting sponsorships, and building corporate relationships. The three play the same roles even today.

Their first show was Conga, India’s first live music competition in 1988, where A.R. Rahman played the keyboard. Then came the MJ show, and most recently, the opening and closing ceremonies of the XIX Commonwealth Games 2010 Delhi, the 2011 ICC Cricket World Cup opening ceremony in Dhaka, and the celebration to mark 150 years of India-South Africa friendship in Durban. Wizcraft also holds the intellectual property rights to a series of live events it launched over the period—the International Indian Film Academy (IIFA) Awards, the Green Globe Foundation Awards, the Global Indian Music Academy Awards, and the Producers’ Guild Awards.

IIFA, the roving, annual film awards event that gives a boost to tourism in the host country, and benefits sponsors globally, has been its most successful. Launched in 2000, its revenue is more than Rs 100 crore every year. It’s also a primetime slot for television advertisers.

The timing was sweet. A decade after the introduction of colour TV (in the ’80s), India was witnessing an invasion of satellite TV. Wizcraft’s founders were also thinking ahead. They knew live events would soon turn into grand spectacles on TV. And the audience would not be restricted to just hall seats. They would be both far and near, real and virtual, watching from across the globe.

SARKARI, JOSEPH, AND Timmins had the experience of organising the Filmfare Awards, a Bennett, Coleman & Co. (BCCL) property. Though broadcast on TV, the event was largely restricted to one genre—Bollywood—and one city, Mumbai. It was one-dimensional and enthralled moviegoers the most. The experience, however, got the three men thinking. And IIFA was born.

“We were doing Filmfare, Femina Miss India and all, but didn’t have a control on them. We were just event managers,” says Joseph. Even more, each year there was also the uncertainty of their proposal for the Filmfare Awards being rejected. Wizcraft, in those days, was “merely an organiser of people and equipment”, Timmins emphasises. Joseph adds that IIFA gave them the platform to do what they wanted. And moving IIFA around globally was an opportunity. They realised that a large TV audience was waiting to be tapped, though initially they thought of taking it abroad because “India was a crowded market”.

IIFA’s first edition, in 2000, at the Millennium Dome in London, made losses, by now a familiar rite of passage. Sponsorships fell short because the dotcom bust had pulled down the economy. Also, companies got cold feet at the last minute. Even now, some say IIFA is just another “glorified” Bollywood party with a physical audience of not more than 3,000. “Sunburn [event management company Percept’s music extravaganza] is a real, live entertainment event with 30,000 to 50,000 young Indians dancing and enjoying on the ground, not on TV or YouTube,” says an official of a Wizcraft competitor.

Yet, all of Bollywood undeniably comes to a standstill for three days, and flies to IIFA destinations to celebrate Indian cinema. Globally, cities bid to host IIFA, thanks to the tourism carrot. A Wizcraft team even works on special effects and creatives for post-production of IIFA before telecast.

“IIFA is more than Bollywood. It is a networking event that corporates track, tourism boards participate in, and cities which host it are highlighted in a manner like never before,” says Sarkari. To make his point, he rewinds to 2009 when Macau hosted IIFA, three months after which tourists from India jumped from 20,000 to over 100,000. “It’s another matter that while events like Sunburn rarely cross Rs 25 crore [FY12], IIFA is doing four times as much,” he adds. (The figures couldn’t be independently verified.)

IIFA is planning a chapter with South Indian cinema. IIFA South is scheduled for a 2014 debut, somewhere in the South East or West Asia. “This should make IIFA a Rs 500 crore brand in the next five years,” says Timmins. From this year, Filmfare Awards owner BCCL has also pitched its Times of India Film Awards against IIFA on the same lines.

SATURDAY, A LITTLE AFTER 4 p.m. At Kingdom of Dreams, Gurgaon, nearly 120 performers are praying in the green room, their moment of peace before they get into their characters and orchestrate chaos. Three floor managers take their stations: One mans the stage, one handles aerial stunts, and the third juggles props onstage. This place is a mass of moving parts: 150 hand props, 33 large stage props, 54 fly bars, a 1.2 MW battery bank for uninterrupted power supply, and so on. For one show, a 20 ft tall elephant prop with multiple trunks and fountains is hydraulically pushed up 27 ft. Aerial acts are performed on wires hanging from a 100 ft high ceiling. A laundry cleans, dries, and irons at least 400 costumes every day. There is even a doctor on call: Performers have been known to twist their ankles, dislocate shoulders, or suffer from dehydration and stress.

Sabbas Joseph, director, Wizcraft
Sabbas Joseph, director, Wizcraft

Built in September 2010, and spread over 9 acres, Kingdom of Dreams is India’s first park styled around Bollywood musicals—with a food court. Across its imposing black, wrought-iron gates at Leisure Valley in Gurgaon’s Sector 29 is a throng of drummers, exotic dancers, and gigantic statues of elephants that greet the audience. Till you reach the theatre, Rang Mahal, for a three-hour spectacle of dance, music, drama, and comedy. For visitors, particularly foreigners, this is exotic India, the land of maharajas and snake charmers.

“This place is like a huge bioscope from the Meena Bazaar [street markets of the Mughal era] days. The concept is borrowed from there and the idea is simple—to offer quality entertainment with an immersive experience you will never forget,” says Sarkari. The property is owned by The Great Indian Nautanki Company, co-owned by Wizcraft; Delhi-based Apra Group, which has interests in auto, real estate, and hospitality; and another real estate company, the Raghubir Group. Together they invested Rs 350 crore, and each has a 33% stake. Rang Mahal seats about 750 people and has staged more than 1,000 shows of Zangoora: The Gypsy Prince, and 400 shows of Jhumroo.

Another grand show, Balle Balle-My Big Fat Indian Wedding, is set to go on stage this month. “Balle Balle will be a travelling show to be staged in various cities and abroad,” says Sarkari, adding that Jhumroo is being turned into a movie. Kingdom of Dreams is sort of a culmination of a journey that the three Wizcraft founders began, to give shape to the fuzzy events management industry.

Andre Timmins, director, Wizcraft
Andre Timmins, director, Wizcraft

COME TO THINK OF it, the opportunity was always there. The market was unorganised (it still is), overcrowded, and fiercely competitive, with aggressive price undercutting. It has only grown. An Ernst & Young report based on a survey of 32 CEOs of Indian event management companies states that the organised portion of the events and activation industry, which was around Rs 2,800 crore in FY12, has grown by over 20% annually to around Rs 4,000 crore by FY14. “Event management, an advertising add-on, was an unknown term here,” recalls Sarkari, adding that they promoted the term, as “party” or “show organisers” were not sophisticated enough. It is also said that every corner in Mumbai has an event manager ready to organise birthday parties, weddings, or corporate dos, at half the market rate. “Many of our employees have left and started their own event management and entertainment companies,” says Joseph.

Roshan Abbas, managing director of Encompass, which was started in 1998-99 and does only brand activation and corporate events, however, says only a handful of companies such as Wizcraft, Percept, Encompass, and Fountainhead have the skills to deliver from concept to execution.

To grow, Wizcraft does not rely only on awards events or properties like Kingdom of Dreams. Big events like the MJ show may give Wizcraft the name (and often controversy), but not much cash. It’s the numerous corporate and private events in between that bring the revenue—more than 60% comes from brand activation and corporate promotions. Riding on the successful launches of Lehar Pepsi, MTV, and Philips Moving Sound, Wizcraft surpassed a turnover of Rs 50 crore in nine years.

Abbas adds that a company in the events/entertainment space can be present in any of the sectors, from films to theme parks, such as Manmohan Shetty’s Adlabs Imagica and Shah Rukh Khan’s KidZania, to brand activation and live shows. Or operate in all of them like Wizcraft. A PricewaterhouseCoopers report states that Indian event managers have demonstrated their capabilities in successfully managing several mega national and international events over the past few years and have even created their own properties.

But it adds, “Issues such as high entertainment taxes in certain states, lack of world-class infrastructure, and the unorganised nature of most event management companies continue to check the potential growth in this segment of the industry.” The cyclical nature of advertising that affects media companies is a similar hurdle. And people in the industry say political parties at all levels see events like the MJ show as an opportunity to make money. “You will either get tired of getting clearances, or have to pay your way out. This is one reason why we don’t have good live entertainment in India,” says the chairman of one of Wizcraft’s big event management competitors. The Wizcraft founders claim they have lasted the longest in the industry—26 years—building the company brick by brick.

Wizcraft Television is probably the natural progression in business. Today, shows that they once produced, such as Indian Idol, and Jhalak Dikhlaja— 100 hours of television content—are highly popular. The company also designed the sets of the highly popular game show Kaun Banega Crorepati. “Wizcraft properties are our bread and butter; we will scale up with them. Work outsourced to us will come next,” says Namit Sharma, business head, Wizcraft Television.

In showbiz, every moment is spectacular, entertaining, and full of surprises. There is passion, while emotional moments are few and far between. Sarkari remembers one. In August, a packet was waiting for him in his Delhi office. Inside it was a handmade kite sent by the principal of Sriram School, Gurgaon, with a message, “I love India because it has Zangoora.” It has become one of his main mementoes. Sarkari says, at Wizcraft, he sees his imagination flying higher than a kite.

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