Keyur Patel, Prasang Events Talks About Celebrating 20 Years of the Company, Challenges Faced & More

by  EVENTFAQS Bureau Industry Watch | May 18, 2020 | Interview

Prasang Events and Entertainment Keyur Patel

With an aim to curate, create, and execute experiences, Prasang Events and Entertainment celebrates its 20th year anniversary and ensures to customize every detail to achieve what is expected by the client on their special day. In an exclusive conversation with EVENTFAQS, Keyur Patel, Director, Prasang Events and Entertainment gives an insight about the journey of the company, challenges faced, future plans, and more!

Celebrating 20 years of Prasang Events and Entertainment, take us through your journey of how the company has grown over the years since its inception.

Launched in 2001, we started Prasang to serve NRI Gujarati clients who don't have anyone who can arrange their weddings in India, that time wedding planning was not a recognized business and very few people were into that though lots of people were doing event management.

We have specifically focused on wedding services, live events, and concerts. Till 2004 we were gradually moving ahead and had established our name in the market abroad. We named our company Prasang because it means celebration. By 2005 local people also started inquiring for our services and we had then started catering local weddings too. We were doing very good in Gujarat market and people started asking us why don't you provide matchmaking services, on that we had taken Shaadi.com franchise for matrimonial services, and we were the first in India to have shaadi.com franchise, we ran that for 4 years till digital and internet came in. Our first breakthrough in terms of a destination wedding in India was in 2010 at Udaipur and Goa and international wedding in 2011 in Thailand and after that, we focused more on large scale destination weddings and turnkey projects in-city and out-city.

Till date all together we have done around 400 + Weddings and 200+ Social events. In India, we have worked in destinations like Udaipur, Jaipur, Jodhpur, Jaisalmer, Goa, Cochin, Mahabalipuram, Ambey Valley, and in terms of an International destination wedding we have focused on Macau, Thailand, Sri Lanka, and UAE. Majority of weddings we have done in these countries.  We also executed lots of live events and concerts between 2006 to 2015 with renowned artists like A R Rahman, Jagjit Singh, Manna Dey, Pritam, and with other music directors and playback singers. In this duration, there were hardly a few names from the industry with whom we didn’t do a concert or live events. At present we have 2 offices in India backed by a strong team of 17 people.

What are the biggest challenges you faced during the tenure of two decades; how did Prasang Events and Entertainment cope up with it?

In terms of facing challenges, we have not faced any problems in business except for bad debts and finance. But with proper planning and patience, we got out of that. We faced a few incidents like that in 2008, 2014 and 2016.

Tell us about your experience. How do you think the wedding industry has shaped up through the years?

Most of the event companies turned in to the wedding planning business due to slowdown and low margins in corporate events, now it is a tough time for the wedding industry due to more people in the industry with unhealthy business practices.

Comment on how you are dealing with the pandemic and what are the upcoming trends in the wedding industry?

By god grace, we had a very good season from November to march before lockdown and we have not faced any problem in the execution of the same. I think post lockdown once things will start there will be few norms which wedding industry has to follow with SOP's and government guidelines. Rest I don't see much changes in terms of celebration and expenditure in the future. Just to have better hygiene practice and SOP's.

What other future initiatives are planned through Prasang Events and Entertainment? 

As now wedding market is growing and the number of players are also adding in, we at Prasang events are now aiming more international destination wedding and social celebration, rather than focusing more on in-city or destination wedding in India.

Also, we have already started focusing on some diversification and future plans, like we are now focusing on representation business and we have already started WE Konsult as a group company since 2019, which has been going good till now.