The President and Secretary of the South Gujarat Event Management Association got candid about their experience conducting the Glam Cricket Event and what they Imagine to be the future of the Gujarat Event Industry.
Harsh Bhaya – Pehechaan event (secretary)
Organising this event for the whole event industry took a lot of work from not just SGEMA but also the other sponsors and partners. The owner of the Pehechan Event, Mr Harsh Bhaya, was a significant sponsor/partner and even the secretary of this event who was representing SGEMA.
He said that there are three things behind organising Glam Cricket 2023. First, they decided to choose one sport to cater to the concept of “health” among all the members participating in this event. Living in India, what better sport to choose than cricket itself? The choice of this particular sport for this event engaged different people from the event industry to participate in this event and enjoy it to their fullest. Second, the whole idea behind making this event exist is getting the entire event fraternity together. The event industry is one such industry that constantly engages in competition among companies.
For a long time, people in that industry have always viewed others as competitors when they could be collaborators instead. So everyone working in this industry can engage in meetings and greetings and help their business expand. Lastly, this event puts out a strong message to society that this fraternity exists. The event industry is an industry that always works behind the scene, with no one to acknowledge every single company/person doing their work. In any major event, only one leader/event manager is present on the scene. Still, in reality, more than 50 agencies would have to come together to make any event glamorous and extraordinary, something out of the box. Making everyone’s voices heard and making their work stand out was one of the central ideas behind organising this event.
Apart from this, everyone who participated in this event would feel like a professional cricketer as they had cheerleaders to cheer them on and pyros, along with sound and strobe light effects, to boost their morale when they scored runs. The responses received have also increased from the first time they carried out this event. Everyone is very excited to participate in this glamorous event.
As mentioned before, the most significant impact that Cricket Glam has left on their fraternity is making the event industry into something more by turning the competitors into collaborators and associates. There was no platform for the companies to come together previously; now, each company is willing to collaborate with other companies to expand their business.
Nirav Desai, president of SGEMA
SGEMA, South Gujarat Event Management Association, considered organising this significant event for enjoyment and togetherness. Nirav Desai, the president of SGEMA, believes that the association still has a long way to go, and in the journey, it will help the Surat Industry to expand and become something worth noticing.
SGEMA’s main motto is “Together we grow,” which is shown through the presentation of Cricket Glam 2023. They want the whole event industry to come under one umbrella and show the market and the media that we are not competitors in this industry. We all work together to achieve a common goal of organising and planning spectacular events in Surat. SGEMA wants everyone in the industry to be recognised for their work and to show everyone that this industry is prospering.
Cricket Glam 2023 was organised with the motto of bringing everyone together. Everyone in the industry, their families, and friends gather for “Cricket Glam 2023” for fun. This event is also a statement to everyone else that if everyone in the industry is together to organise one single event, the event will turn out to be glamorous and magnificent, something that nobody would have ever dreamed of. Surat, being such a large industry, has a minimum of 500-600 event planners. In SGEMA, there are about 160+ members, and it is still growing. The most significant achievement for SGEMA is being awarded the title of India’s third-largest association, with a considerable number of members and spectacular events. These events are a manner of speaking to the whole India-wide event industry, that Surat’s industry has potential and if the whole industry comes together, the work will be even better than the most prospering industries of India themselves. Therefore, people from all over Gujarat were also invited to witness this Glam event.
Nirav Desai states that when they decided to start with the first edition of Cricket Glam 2023, they never thought they’d bring the event planners to one place. This is because the whole industry caters to not only event planners but also sound vendors, lights vendors, caterers, firework vendors, etc. Everybody thinks they only need an event planner to organise their event, but in reality, many hands are involved in organising and executing an event. He wanted the whole industry to come together on the same platform, discuss their business with one another, and help Surat’s Event Industry grow larger.
For Cricket Glam 2023, we needed sponsors to have the proper funds to execute the cricket matches. Apart from the event fund, a food fund was also needed since the event had a proper fine dining setting, where everyone ate for the entirety of the three days when the event was conducted. They never forced any sponsor to fund for the same, all the sponsors came voluntarily and helped SGEMA execute this event successfully.
Nirav Desai’s future vision for his association and further editions of “Cricket Glam” is to involve more and more people in the cricket tournament so that everyone understands the importance of the event industry with more depth. He also wishes to show the youth present that if their seniors can bring everyone together through this platform and execute an event successfully, what can the youth do? Through SGMEA and such events, he wishes to show the emerging youth of Surat that there is a lot of potential in the event industry if you cultivate it correctly.
