Kaleidoscope -Leaders' Views
Activating Fairs & Events - a Fair Act
Mr. Sunil More
Partner
FairAct
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Start of Business
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2011
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Business website
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www.fairact.in
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Main Product Lines
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Exhibitions, Conferences and Events Organisation and Management Services
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‘Star’ Product /State-of-the Art Design/Front-running Product
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Handling Exhibition operations
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Quality credentials of products (ISO/ CE/UL /CSA/RoHS etc.)
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Not Applicable
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City & Country of factory and Head Office
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Mumbai,India
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Names of locations of branch offices
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Chennai, New Delhi, Kolkata
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Main countries of business operations
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India, Ghana, Morocco, Nigeria, South Africa, UAE
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Major market segments for products
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In the field of Exhibitions & Events organisation
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Turnover growth % in last year compared to previous year
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15%
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Summary
Most organisations dealing in events, have frequency of same event of 2 to 4 years, and cannot sustain to hold the infrastructure including manpower for the off-peak period. FairAct has realised this need and is just doing a fair deal to bridge this gap. FairAct offers all those required services to the Exhibition Organisers, thus releiving them from unnecessary expense, and yet offer these services with elegance and in a professional manner.
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Jitendrakumar Kataria,
Managing Director
Journey of Beckhoff India- Since 2007…
First approach to the Indian market was back in 2001 when we got a contact to our first partner, Inteltek Automation. At that time,
we had very limited knowledge about India and the India Automation industry. Through our partner, we got a first insight
to the Indian market, made the first steps, and had the first success in business. It became clear to us that the Indian
industry is developing rather quickly and that there was an evident openness and demand for innovative technology from
Germany Over the years, we saw some progress in business but also identified that the Indian manufacturing Industry have
huge engineering talent and resourceful engineers who are in search of right Automation technology tools and we need to invest
more into the market with more dedicated focus , and provide more direct support (technical and commercial) to the industry.
And this was possible with our partner concept. This, when we decided back in 2006 to open our own operations, as a subsidiary,
with headquarters in Pune.
1. How has Beckhoff India evolved over the last decade? When you look back what is your view now?
We started in 2007 with an initial team of around 5 people. Luckily, we had with our founding Managing Director, Jitendrakumar Kataria, who worked in our Software R+D team in Germany, a young energetic MD with strong technical abilities and big talent to build-up a team and business. He, with the support of our experienced starting team made it happen to constantly grow our team, expand our reach to the vast geographical market. Within a decade 7 offices around India and a strength of 60 well trained and experienced automation engineers and supporting administration professionals has given Beckhoff India a solid foundation to our operations to take a leap further.
We won the trust of industry with many business partners, users and service providers (formerly called as “customers”) joining the New Automation Technology mission in India., Building reliable business relationships with focus on technology, innovation & value addition as key ingredients, it is indeed satisfying and motivating looking back at the decisions taken & the path traversed.
2. What were some significant challenges you’ve had to overcome and how did you get past them?
The initial challenges were
As we had limited resources we were not able to provide services to our customer across India. Creating awareness about new automation technology concept, differentiating us from traditional automation products across different industry segments, reaching out to the end user industries and maintaining higher ethical business standards were other bigger challenges. Over the years we have now established our high performance standards and expanded our horizons to be within geographical reach of customers with 7 office locations across India that provide better & prompt technical support to our customer as and when demanded.
Servicing our products in India was not possible in the initial phase of business. Over the years we have developed a service Centre in Pune with accreditation Level S1 and we are able to provide speedy service to those in need.
Beckhoff is known for PC based control technology. Initially it was a big challenge to make customers understand this revolutionary technology and develop their confidence in the same. Over the years customers have gradually understood the value potential of PC based control and the acceptance level of the same is increasing across industry verticals The relevance of PC based Automation for Machine Control is also well received by industry because the new requirements viz. IoT, Industry 4.0, asset management can be met with PC based control which provides the right platform.
3. What was your vision & how do you see the progress of Beckhoff India so far towards this?
Our Vision was to Enable Make by India. We strongly believed in helping Indian equipment manufacturers to produce world class equipment’s using Beckhoff technology so that they can compete in the Global market.
I would say we are pretty much successful in the same and still this work is in progress with our growing customer base in India.
4. How do you see the Indian Automation Business today and the future?
Beckhoff business in India is on continuous rise since inception. Thanks to our industry partners who have trusted us and our technology.
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What were thoughts and philosophies for starting your business?
With a background of working in a national Association for 32 years and last 15 years as its Director General as well as being responsible for organizing a very large world-class international exhibition, a need was noticed particularly in extending assistance to exhibitions and events organisers in the area of operations management.
Many of the Associations organize their flagship exhibitions with a frequency of 2 to 4 years. It is economically unviable for such organisations to maintain an operations manpower since the same remains idle till the next Show is announced. The private organisers, on the other hand like to concentrate more on marketing aspects and look forward to outsourcing operations work to professionals.
Realising this need, we three partners, started FairAct in the year 2011.
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To what extent you feel having fulfilled your objectives today?
Our company is in existence for the past 5 years and has worked with very large Associations and Exhibition organisers to their satisfaction. Though we are still learning, particularly in assimilating the latest technologies to serve our clients more efficiently, we believe we have done fairly well during these years. Having said so, we believe that learning is a process and there is room for improvement, always.
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What according to you are your positive points towards growth and sustenance of your
business?
We three partners together have more than 50 years of combined experience of managing conferences and exhibitions. Having background of working in an Association, we not only gel well with the Associations, their members and executives but also understand their needs and constraints better. The extensive experience of working with industry leaders while in Association, gives us a cutting edge in handling and resolving critical issues. Our flexibility also assures Organisers of our ability of delivering services even though requested and desired at the last moment.
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What are your growth/expansion plans for next 5 years?
We are looking at a minimum of 20% growth every year.
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Can you give brief account of major projects / assignments executed in the recent past:
During the current financial year, we have provided exhibition management services to more than 15 events including 3 major exhibitions having more than 1,000 exhibitors; viz,
bcINDIA 2016 - Exhibition of Construction Machinery and Equipments
ITME 2016 - Indian Textile Machinery Exhibition in Mumbai
PLASTIVISION 2017 - International Plastics and Plastic Machinery Exhibition
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What are your major forthcoming projects that you may like to describe?
In a natural step forward, this year, we provided ‘Turn Key’ Services to an Association taking over all expenses of the event with a ‘Revenue Sharing’ model. We also entered into the business of organizing exhibitions during the current financial year by organizing an exhibition in Ghana, Africa. This will be followed by organization of six more exhibitions in Ghana on different subjects. In addition, we are also organizing two exhibitions in India.
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How do you foresee growth of your industry in next 5 years (a) in the country, and (b)
internationally?
Considering that India is a fast emerging markets both in industrial as well as consumer sectors, it is expected that the exhibition industry will continue to grow during the coming 5 years. The growth in international markets, though not significant, but will remain fairly stable.
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What kind of bottlenecks you anticipate in your growth plans for next 5 years?
There are many bottlenecks in growth of the industry but these bottlenecks are universal for all sectors. Most important bottlenecks are quality of infrastructure, statutory and legal regulations, inability to look at the broader picture etc.
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In present business practices, do you experience problems like:
a) Unusual credits expectations by customers, – Not from all customers. Some are very good and some are not so.
b) Payment delays, non-payments, bad debts, – Partially true
c) Statutory & regulatory exploitations, – Yes. But I will call it as Statutory and regulatory Regulations. I do appreciate that some of the regulations are necessary and justified in view of the safety and security of our country. But there are some regulations, provisions of which are exploited by unscrupulous elements.
I will name a few regulations, which are causing hardships:
- Approval from Trade Fair Organisations and concerned Ministries. We do appreciate these regulations from the point of view of safety and security of our country. However, time taken in obtaining these approvals needs to be reduced by streamlining procedures.
- Restrictions on Import of Exhibition material and exhibits
- Entry and exit of material from the boundries of the cities where exhibitions are held
- Entertainment Tax on conferences and technical and knowledge based events
- Provisions of Labour Acts, wordings of which are causing exploitation of exhibition organisers by unscrupulous elements
- Various local permissions and no-objection certificates required from state and local governments
d) Harassment from some specific sectors, - Yes
e) Effects of Government policies (lack of policies/inadequate policies/negative policies) -
- The major difficulty faced by the industry is that the industry does not enjoy status of ‘Industry’ by the Government. Regulations and incentives specific to the industry are therefore not possible in absence of such status.
- Such ‘Industry’ Status will allow the Government to look holistically at the Industry. The business generated by this industry is not only for the organisers and the participants in such events alone but to a wider sections, such as hospitality industry, travel industry, tax collections by the Government, employment generation during the event etc.
f) Effects of International happenings
- The effects of international happenings do affect but these can not be generalized. For example, SARS and Bird Flue did affect the business to some extent. There is however more impact of National conditions on the business. These detriments are arson, terrorism, epidemics etc.
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As a progressive and prominent businessman, would you have any suggestions for removing these hurdles?
As mentioned before, ‘Industry’ Status will help the Industry as the Government can create a policy for development of the industry.
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How you see the onslaught of international competition in your business segments?
We welcome international competition since it brings in technology, professionalism and transparency. There are many areas where Indian organisers can learn from the practices followed by the international players.
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Operations handled for World Dental Congress
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Operations handled for bC India
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Operations handled for Acrex India
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Operations handled for India ITME
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Team FairAct at CEEAMATECH
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Operations handled for PLASTIVISION
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Inauguration of POWERELEC GHANA 2016
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Dignitaries visiting POWERELEC GHANA 2016
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Staitionery and Goft Show 2017
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Staitionery and Goft Show 2017 (2)
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