The leadership traced Exhicon Events Media Solutions Ltd.’s journey from entering India’s nascent exhibition industry in the late 1990s to building a 360-degree, one-stop solutions platform for organisers as the sector scaled rapidly. They highlighted the company’s strategic shift toward infrastructure ownership, acquisitions, and new exhibition venues, positioning Exhicon for sustained growth following its public listing.
Mubina Kapasi: The depth of the stock market is such now that we have the opportunity to even consider investing in a company like an exhibition and event solutions company which probably wasn’t possible a few years ago. So I think Mr. Sayar let’s start off first with the fact that were you always in this industry from even before forming Exicon because naturally that must have been your stepping stones. So I just want to know how did what were the series of events that led to the establishment of Exicon?
MQ Syed: Well a very good question.
The exhibition industry in India goes back to around 30 to 35 odd years and I talk about the B2B trade fairs though if you speak about the Mela, the Pushkar Mela was 100 years ago but when we are specific to trade fairs it started around 1995 taking shape. Those time there were hardly 10 exhibition organisers in the country and a couple of service providers. In 1997 I realised that this industry has got potential and this is the only industry where I can grow without money at that point of time because otherwise any business that you do needs a lot of investment, the capital which we didn’t have, I didn’t have rather because I started it.
So I entered accidentally in providing a small service of an exhibition and then I realised that this industry has got the overall funnel of economy and the overall growth in this industry can grow a nation, a geography, a full of number of countries together and the world. And when I studied a bit about the German economy and the overall growth of Germany, I found that around 2% of the total growth of Germany’s economy, the GDP comes from the exhibitions and that was pretty surprising for me. And slowly and steadily when we got engraved into it, it was more of passion that put us 100% involved into the segment and slowly and gradually started moving forward.
So we’ve seen industry right from the nascent stage in the country and today when we look at the number of exhibitions have grown manifold. The number of exhibitors earlier, the overall exhibitors in a year, in the year 2000-2001 were around 10,000 companies which were participating in the exhibitions all around the country. Today there are more than 10 million companies participating through exhibitions and bringing in more clients and you know creating their impact not only in India but all around the world.
So the size of the industry is growing much more faster than we can actually serve them and Exhicon has been always at the forefront to ensure that the 360 degree solution is created and provided to exhibition organisers.
Mubina Kapasi: What do you think are the core competencies that set you up? You know I understand that you have some venues in Ayodhya, a town like Ayodhya and of course in some of the major cities in India. So I want to know what is setting you apart because not only has the industry exploded, the organisers have also increased in number naturally to cater to these kind of numbers that are coming up like you mentioned.
So what do you think is your core competency?
MQ Syed: Well, a core is to ensure that the entire solution is provided to an exhibition organiser who is trying to organise an exhibition. Since we know perhaps more than the exhibition organiser himself, so we guide them from the starting till end all the processes of how to organise the best of the show, how to ensure that the overall you know the experience of exhibitors, the organisers, the delegates is actually exceeding and hence we are able to you know not only set apart ourselves from the existing other suppliers but also to ensure that the success of the exhibition is depending on us. So that’s that’s the core of us I would say.
Mubina Kapasi: You know the last couple of years you’ve made a lot of interesting acquisitions. I just want to know where are you heading exactly? I mean right now you’re providing services in terms of exhibitions, events. Now you have all of these acquisitions.
So how do you imagine Exhicon shaping up?
MQ Syed: Well I have read a few years ago a very small quote of late Shri Dhirubhai Ambani ji. He has said in some event that every Indian who spends one rupee, I would like to see 80 paisa coming back to Reliance. So our objective is same as far as the exhibitions and events are concerned.
We want to have at least 80 percent of the total money being spent by the exhibition organisers or event managers or the corporate clients back to Exhicon and that’s where we are heading to. So far we have around 32 odd excellent services which are part of creating an exhibition on ground and we are fortunate enough to become the leader in those services. We’re trying to bring in more.
Our idea is to ensure that any penny which is spent by a client has to come back to us. He can take his 20 percent pad I have no problem but rest of the money should come back to us.
Mubina Kapasi: So it’s almost like you will become the one-stop shop then for everything right?
Mq Syed: Absolutely.
So that’s the whole idea and that’s what precisely we are doing and in this value chain the biggest I would say challenge is the infrastructure and the biggest capex is also to be spent in that infrastructure. That is the area which Exhicon was not very big in. We were always providing our services to different venues across the country however last year as you might have also seen in our previous announcement that Exicon has got into a association with India Exposition Mart Limited which is India’s largest integrated exhibition centre in Greater Noida and we are going to tier two cities to create 16 exhibition venues of our own.
So that’s where we are moving forward to. In this journey we have already completed two exhibition venues in Pune which is again the largest of the city in terms of the both indoors and outdoor and one is dedicated to concerts which is the live event venue. So we are already having two of our own venues respect to nine acres.
We have acquired big sports venue also two golf courses in Pune which is also large in the space and we do a lot of corporate event live event concerts over there in addition to the sports which is of course the key of that essence of that acquisition and now we are in joint venture with India Exposition Mart Limited to create 34,000 square metre of the exhibition venue within the premise of the Greater Noida Expo Centre. Current capacity of Greater Noida Expo Centre is 65,000 square metre. We are adding 34,000 square metre more that’s as big as 50 percent of the total capacity and that will give us a big you know leak in terms of holding indoor exhibitions because the biggest challenge that country today is seeing that we are doing lots of exhibitions outside the venues because of the lack of the venues if I give you the current numbers the overall indoor space in the country today is 750,000 square metres period which is one of the smallest venue in China one single venue.
Imagine the kind of requirement of the infrastructure and the kind of availability of the infrastructure as far as the event venues are concerned. Hence we took a very conscious call we had a lot of research and analysis done before creation of this MOU and finally got into 16 new venues across the country. So by the year 2020 2030 we expect that we’ll have 18 exhibition centres in the country.
So this is the big move that we have already started to you know take our journey on and this will give us a different call kind of ballgame all together.
Mubina Kapasi: So you started off being in an industry where there’s not too much capital requirement and now look at the way you’re investing across exhibition centres acquisitions. Is this just beginning? Is your cycle of investing just beginning or are we done? Is there going to be a bit of a pause? How is it going to go like? What’s it going to be for the next 10 years?
MQ Syed: You know what when when I my company was a private limited company and when I used to go to different industry forum and speak about the exhibition and trade fair sector I was thinking that we are already done we are there we have achieved you know.
The day I got listed in this very hall on the 17th on the 23rd of 17th of April 2023 I found that some some investor came and told me you are a tiny stock you’re not even you know tiny. I then realised that we are nowhere we are nobody you know and then we started realising the importance of going to grow multi-fold after getting listed. So a journey I would say is just started I keep on telling my team members and also all my people and associate that please don’t stop here it is just a start.
So it’s just a start as I said we got listed at the top line of 37 crore with a pat of about 16-17 percent. In just two results we were at 146 crore last year and our pad grew from 17 to 20 percent and in the h1 of this year we have already done 102 crores with a top line with the of around 21 percent. So you can look at the numbers you can look at the journey you can look at the kind of involvement that we have you know got into even after getting listed.
So that’s the start of the journey which I would like to say.
Mubina Kapasi: Well thank you very much for joining us today and all the very best for all your future plans.