Driven by a sterling demographic dividend, continuing structural reform and globalization, India is poised to accelerate its growth rate to 9-9.5% over 2013-15. This has prompted the belief that India will be the world's fastest growing economy by 2013-15.
The GDP growth in India has averaged 6.2% annually over the past 30 years. During this period, India's GDP grew seven times to $1.2 trillion. India has also been constantly registering a steady growth with huge investments through FDI. It recorded investments worth US$46.84 billion in 2011-2012 which is a significant 34.4% increase from the US$34.84 billion recorded in 2010-2011.
The Indian Media & Entertainment industry is anticipated to touch US$ 25.51 billion by 2016 (forecasted by a recent report from KPMG) thus registering a CAGR of 15%. Prime reasons for this forecasted growth is strong consumptions in Tier 2 and 3 cities, sustainable growth in regional media and the ever increasing new media business.
Others include the rising infrastructure growth, India's economic and industrial position in markets across the world and recently, the possibility of successful world class events that has resulted to better infrastructural outlays.
India also recently recorded over 500 million people under the age of 25, and favourable demographics coupled with rising disposable income acts as a catalyst to these youngsters who persuasively spend on leisure and entertainment.
Substantially with a cumulative annual growth and an invasive evolution in the middle class, India has witnessed an invigorated upsurge in investments made by International companies, especially from US and Western Europe, who are now focusing on expanding their brand and business in this ever growing economy.
All of these factors have also triggered the favoured growth in the Pro Audio, Pro Sound, Pro Lighting, Pro AV and Music Production industries as well. A crucial factor fuelling the growth of these segments is consumer and end-user-led spending in a gamut of entertainment options.
The exposure to international standards of entertainment, latest in international technology, infrastructure growth, and availability of varied entertainment options aggravated with increasing market competition has increased the demand for high performance professional equipment.
With more than 300 hotels across major international brands expected to come up in India by 2012, coupled with a number of stadiums, multiplexes, amphitheatres and auditoriums projected to be built in next 3 - 4 years and more entertainment destinations like the Kingdom of Dreams, theme parks, concert venues, elite shopping malls and office spaces with world class facilities, the Indian Pro Audio, Lighting, Pro AV and Music Production industries are all set to roar its multilevel growth in the coming few years.
Playing an extremely crucial role in driving this growth is the PALM Expo, India’s foremost and undisputed and internationally reputed exposition for the Pro sound, Lighting, Music production, Musical instruments and Pro AV industry. The Expo is an amalgamation of creative & technical talent, trade and quality business networking, and was envisaged as a platform to deliver enhanced business opportunities within the Indian market.
The Expo showcases products across all categories in the pro audio, pro sound, pro AV, lighting, broadcast and music production segments. The show witnesses the participation from heavy-weights of pro audio like Harman Professional, Sennheiser, Loud Technologies, Music Group, QSC, DiGiCo, TC Group, Avid, Genelec and many more, who re-affirm their commitment & dedication to the Indian market. At the same time, major lighting brands like Clay Paky, Robe, Martin Professional, Zero88, SGM, PR Lighting, Avolites, DTS, etc and much more also participate with great enthusiasm and zeal.
The show also boasts of world class features across its agenda that fulfils almost every expectation of the extremely diverse visitor profile. Established features like the Harman Live Arena, the PALM DJ Competition, the PALM Conference & Seminars and the PALM Open air line-array demo have witnessed staggering turnouts with quality visitors, while the new features like the Sennheiser’s Live Mixing Workshop (LMW), the Laser & lighting demo cum workshop, and the PALM Innovation Spotlight have also been well received.
Another premier highlight of the show is the PALM Awards ceremony, which recognizes, honours and felicitates professionals across crucial technical categories from stage, sound and lighting.
Touted to be the best ever PALM Expo till date, the 2012 edition of the PALM Expo had exhibitors extremely excited with the kind of turnout they witnessed at the show and the amount of interest and response they received. Official reports from PALM 2012 state that the show clocked over 20,000 visitor registrations over the three days of its span – an increase of over 25% as compared to the 2011, while the floor space was calculated to be around 12,000sq.m, housing a total of 117 exhibitors.
In terms of the features, PALM 2012 saw Harman extending its support for the third consecutive year, as they joined hands with the PALM Expo yet again to deliver a magnificently magnanimous feature in the form of the Harman Live Arena. Like last year, the feature was more than a huge hit with the audiences, as it helped the musicians identify, evaluate and understand how they can enhance their audio requirements and deliver the best sound experience. Stage, Sound, Light and Music came together in perfect harmony.
Ankush Agarwal, Director Marketing & Business Development, Harman India- Professional said, “PALM Expo 2012 has yet again provided the professional audio industry the impetus and platform to highlight technologies and networking for structured growth and expansion of the professional audio industry in India. It is undoubtedly an excellent platform to showcase and highlight the latest and most apt technology in the Live professional audio segment”. As a continuous endeavour to showcase the Harman and its legendary brands applications and technological advancement, for Harman, this year’s Expo was noteworthy in many ways. Ankush added “Overall this show was a very successful show for Harman India, given that we were able to address a wide range of audio requirements of the audio professionals in India”.
At the same time, Sennheiser conducted the first ever edition of the Live Mixing Workshop (LMW) at the PALM which was one of the major attractions of the event. The LMW struck high notes with the majority live sound engineers present at the event, as it delivered a comprehensive schedule that encompassed several nuances of live mixing.
Sharmila Sahai - Managing Director of Sennheiser Electronics India Pvt Ltd, stated that she was extremely pleased with the way the show eventually turned out as she quoted, “The show has come a long way since we first started participating in 2007. The presence of so many new brands at the show and the number of visitors is a clear indicator that it has become a very important show for the Indian Professional Audio Industry. This year the PALM show was exceptionally good for Sennheiser India. We received very positive response to our L’Acoustic partnership announcement. For our Live Mixing Workshop also the feedback was very positive. Last but not the least, our MI Sales order booking was the highest compared to any other show and any other year!”
The show also featured some of the top notch pro audio, lighting, staging and trussing brands through exhibitors from China.
Jenny Shan from EIECO – East International Exhibition Company Ltd, one of the exhibitors at the China Pavilion mentioned, “Different from other exhibitions, Palm Expo Show visitors kept increasing in the afternoon. There were 2 different kinds of spectators with different intentions. One was professional visitors who run stores and distribute industry chains in Mumbai, whose main target was to look for competent exhibitors for business orders accounted for a considerate proportion. The other was amateurs of music and even teachers and students of universities, who played an important role in Palm Expo Show as well. There were a lot of opportunities for Chinese enterprises in Palm Expo Show.”
The PALM Expo 2012 superseded all expectations with some extremely impressive deliverables that came to fruition this year. However, Diversified Communications India (DCI) – the organizers of the PALM Expo assure that they will continue to invest in modernizing the show and providing a state of the art experience. Many initiatives and enhancements are planned for the flagship event for next year, and the organizers are confident that this will help the future editions of the show to the next level.
PALM Expo will march with pride into its thirteenth year in 2013 and will be held from 30th May – 1st June 2013 at the Bombay Exhibition Centre, Mumbai, INDIA. To book your space, write to contact Ramesh Chetwani on rchetwani@divcom.in
