Industry

Prospects
The Indian exhibition market, reflecting its overall economy, has witnessed a significant change
and growth over the last 15 years. Since 1990, and particularly since 2000, the exhibition
business has profited from new purpose-built exhibition venues in several Indian cities.

New Delhi is ahead by far in the exhibition business in India taking the lead in available purpose
built exhibition space, the number of hosted exhibitions and the number of major exhibition
organisers. Mumbai follows second with some other cities emerging, such as Bangalore,
Chennai and Hyderabad.

The presence of foreign investors and the recent partnerships undertaken between foreign and
domestic stakeholders demonstrates the attractiveness of this country as an emerging and
promising market. Furthermore, the recent creation of an Indian exhibition association shows
the willingness of the major market players to federate and structure the exhibition industry.

Today exhibition organizers are concentrating on niche areas such as machine tools, building
and construction, engineering, electronics, plastics and rubber. As the economy is opening up,
more products are exhibited and the need for specialized exhibitions increases. The retail
marketing sector is also a new trend in the trade fair industry in India.

The exhibition market in India has a promising future and is destined to grow. The policy of the
Indian government and its bureaucracy is slowly changing, allowing private stakeholders and
the foreign investors to invest and develop business more easily.

Scope
The economy of India is growing by leaps and bounds and the Indian exhibition industry is
among those, which has benefited the most. It has entered a modernization and growth phase.
New tradeshows are organized, new exhibition centres are built, and the market is opening up
to foreign investors for both the organization of exhibitions and the operation of venues.

This industry has come a long way in the last five years or so and today is no less than a
multi-crore industry, as a whole. In the last couple of years, event companies in India have been

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Industry

spending approximately Rs. 1,800 crore per annum.

Currently there are 14 purpose-built exhibition centres providing an indoor exhibition space of
205,185sq.m. Of these 3 have space exceeding 20,000 sq.m. No exhibition centre exceeds
70,000 sq.m of available indoor exhibition space. New Delhi and Mumbai alone represent 70%
of the nation’s dedicated exhibition capacity.

As in any developing economy, steps are being made to meet the demands made by
increasingly robust manufacturing and service sectors. Three new exhibition facilities are on the
horizon, and the nation’s show organizers are continually developing new exhibition themes.
The creation of partnerships and joint-ventures with foreign exhibition organisations is also
driving the industry standard forward.

As India’s industrial engineering, garment, transport equipment and IT/telecoms sectors

continue to develop in this nation representing Asia’s fourth largest economy, the shortfall in
professional exhibition facilities will become increasingly acute.

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