Owen Roncon of BookMyShow on Prioritizing Fan Experience Through Enhanced Peripheral Offerings
by Mugdha Gaonkar Entertainment | October 29, 2024 | Interview
Owen Roncon BookMyShow NYKAALAND Nykaa
Following the success of Nykaaland—a three-day beauty and lifestyle festival that drew in 25,000 attendees—BookMyShow is gearing up for its next venture. As a leading producer of live entertainment, the company is enthusiastic about exploring fresh opportunities beyond music. Unique events like Nykaaland mark BookMyShow’s shift into new territory, such as beauty, offering a glimpse into the future of diverse, experience-driven live entertainment.
In an exclusive interview with EVENTFAQS Media, Owen Roncon, Chief of Business - Live Events at BookMyShow, delves into the company’s strategic expansion into lifestyle and beauty festivals. With a keen eye on evolving consumer interests, Roncon sheds light on the brand’s collaboration with beauty giant Nykaa, creating immersive, trend-driven experiences for audiences. He also hints at exciting, large-scale festivals on the horizon, underscoring BookMyShow’s commitment to redefining live entertainment and enhancing the experiential landscape in India.
BookMyShow has traditionally been known for entertainment events, such as movies and concerts. What made you diversify into lifestyle and beauty festivals, like Nykaaland?
India is a hub of culturally rich and diverse people who have always loved their entertainment and looked at it as a primary preference to spend their leisure time. When we forayed into the production of out-of-home live entertainment back in 2017, a natural fit to begin with genres of music, comedy, theatricals and plays and allied realms. 8 years later, BookMyShow Live, the live entertainment experiential division of BookMyShow has established its core offering and expertise as the curator, producer, promoter and end-to-end executor of ticketing, on-ground operations, F&B and other peripheral experiences that together build a well-rounded, holistic and immersive consumer experience. In our endeavor to further build the live entertainment ecosystem in India and with consumers being at the core of everything that we do at BookMyShow, our next move was expanding the horizons to include segments that are important to our consumers as leisure.
Therefore, we worked towards building and curating an IP for an allied industry, such as beauty in the case of Nykaaland to create and put together an on-ground experience that covers various pillars of beauty apart from just the sale of products, thus creating a world of beauty that is engaging, immersive and speaks the language that consumers resonate with, across all fronts. An experiential, hands-on festival for all things beauty and lifestyle has never been a part of the events’ roster in India and with Nykaaland, we are thrilled to be breaching a new frontier and introducing this experience to our Indian audiences.
Could you tell us more about the collaboration between BookMyShow and Nykaa for this event? How did this partnership come about?
Nykaaland is designed to be an extraordinary experience, promising an unforgettable weekend filled with engaging interactions with top beauty and fashion brands, as well as influential personalities. In partnership with Nykaa, BookMyShow Live has curated a unique playground of all things beauty with interactive experiences, brand launches, music performances and more, providing consumers access to both local and international beauty and fashion brands.
Nykaaland 2.0 continued to raise the bar with an exciting line-up featuring 80+ Indian and international brands, 10+ epic new launches, 10+ immersive experience zones, 12+ workshops and expert sessions and over 500 beauty icons, including celebrities and experts. With more than 12 hours of non-stop music performances, Nykaaland 2.0 also showcased make-up masterclasses by the biggest in beauty including Sofia Tilbury and Patrick Ta. The iconic Sofia Tilbury revealed her tips and tricks to achieve the legendary Pillow Talk look, for an AM to PM look, with the stunning Shanaya Kapoor as her muse. Famous for making the biggest stars shine, Patrick Ta taught attendees how to nail that flawless, camera-ready look. The makeup maverick behind the stunning transformations of Gigi Hadid, Penélope Cruz, Camila Cabello and Demi Lovato, he brought his signature red carpet look to his masterclass at Nykaaland 2.0.
Entertainment and experientials remain at the core of our offering, as we’ve created beauty’s biggest playground set against a backdrop of a beautiful blend where vintage charm meets modern elegance, as soft pastels, playful pops of pink and retro elements were woven into every corner of the festival. The stage was set with performances from artists like the iconic Jay Sean, the dynamic duo Oaff & Savera, powerhouse Kayan and up-and-coming artists like GauriWho, Gurbax and DJ Lynston, ensuring an engaging and unforgettable experience. Nykaaland 2.0 introduced two brand-new zones - the chic Beauty Bar, an island-style bar where one could sip and socialise, as they found hidden beauty gems and the Retro Diner, that brought old-school vibes with a modern twist.
The Foundation hangar was the immersive and interactive house of the biggest beauty and fashion brands, came alive with more than 80 iconic international and Indian brands offering their latest. Beauty aficionados indulged in product sampling, shopping, and experiential zones, discovering must-haves from new launches and festival exclusives. This year marked the debut of Carolina Herrera, Versace, Jimmy Choo and Laura Mercier, alongside cult favourites like Beauty of Joseon, CeraVe, Moroccanoil, Kevin.Murphy and more. That is not it! Fashion enthusiasts explored the hottest-selling homegrown and international labels - Puma, Footlocker, Revolve, Gajra Gang, KICA and Cider, amongst others.
With so much to experience, Nykaaland 2.0 redefined beauty festivals in India, leaving visitors with memories to cherish for a lifetime. With a footfall of over 25,000 over three days, the festival once again proved to be a haven for beauty lovers. One of the festival’s most remarkable highlights was the overwhelming generosity of beauty brands, with an impressive 400,000 samples distributed to attendees. This allowed festival-goers to explore, experiment and discover a wide range of products. Nykaaland 2.0 also underscored its dedication to education, as nearly 1000+ content creators and over 5,000 enthusiastic participants attended the insightful Masterclasses at The Highlighter led by industry experts, offering invaluable learning opportunities.
Besides beauty and fashion, are there other sectors or industries you plan to collaborate with in the future? Any upcoming large-scale festivals or experiential events in the pipeline that you can share with us?
Consumer preferences and interests have evolved sizably over the past few years, but the sense of belonging that is innate to the nature of human beings through social interaction, connection and community remains strong.
Live entertainment, whether it is through music concerts and festivals or any other performance acts, have become a mainstay in the social and cultural fabric of India and are certainly seeing a massive resurgence. This is not just a one-time phenomenon but something that we have been witnessing over a vast spectrum right from smaller capacity, intimate concert gatherings to large-scale, stadium sized gigs and music festivals alike.
In fact, in 2023 alone, about 13.5 million entertainment enthusiasts stepped out for live entertainment from across 26,359 events throughout the year as per our annual end-of-year report titled BookMyShow’s Best of 2023, including events produced and promoted by BookMyShow Live as also those listed on our platform with commendable numbers coming in from Tier II and III cities as well.
Beyond music and comedy, diverse genres like live performances, curated IPs such as Nykaaland in new and allied industries like beauty and immersive experiences drawn from artistic expressions like Van Gogh 360 are driving this industry shift. Brands are recognising the potential, integrating live entertainment into their annual budgets for real-time audience engagement. Initiatives like early bird ticket sale phases showcase fan-first strategies and have been met with phenomenal responses. Our focus remains on elevating and prioritising the fan experience by enhancing peripheral offerings including on-ground engagements, F&B and hospitality, parking and seamless ingress management. As we propel the live entertainment industry to new heights, our commitment remains unwavering – the consumer, the fan, the spectator – however you may call them - stands atop our pyramid.
Anticipation for upcoming major music performances is running high, Avenged Sevenfold and Extreme at Bandland 2024, including Cigarettes After Sex India Tour, Coldplay Music Of The Spheres World Tour and Green Day and Shawn Mendes at Lollapalooza India 2025 suggesting a sustained influx of international acts and continued growth in this sector. We’ve also seen a phenomenal response for live entertainment genres such as comedy with a recent bone-tickling tour by Nigel Ng and family entertainment with 66 shows of Peppa Pig’s Adventure across India.
In an exclusive interview with EVENTFAQS Media, Owen Roncon, BookMyShow, delves into the company’s strategic expansion into lifestyle and beauty festivals.