Nipun Joshi: meet the eventpreneur for fetching a new wave for the Indian event industry with Excelsia(India) Branding & Entertainment
Event industry has matured well in the past decade and accordingly on those grounds, one has to get his work cut out for himself to start within the industry. Wearing copious aspects and types, event industry homes both thorns and flowers. Still and all, there are people like Nipun Joshi who fought tooth and nail to create an edge in this evolving event industry. Nipun has taken his ardour for event management and has done what most event entrepreneurs will only dare to dream. Today, he is the Co-founder & COO of Excelsia(India) Branding & Entertainment. Nestling more than a decade experience in marketing fraternity with enriched experience of sales, branding, promotions, brand establishments, Nipun has contentedly executed various genre of events during his tenure in various companies across the country and abroad. In this interview, Nipun shared with the editorial spokesperson what it is like to start and manage an event business in India, how he coped and what has kept him going even in difficult times. Nipun knows this all too well. So it's safe to say he's made a success of it. But how did it all happen, what were the struggles, and how did he get to where he is today?
We sat down with Nipun to find out…
Safely taking on the floor, how and why did you decide to jump into Event Management space?
In 2010, I came back to India after completing my MBA studies followed up by one and a half year of work experience in Media sales, from the UK to explore professional career opportunities in India, and to be a support to my parents. During my professional stint at 'Pearson Education Services Pvt. Ltd', I was heading Marketing for Pearson Schools based in Central and Northern India, from 2012–15; Event Management was a very crucial part of the Job Description. This further cultivated my interest in the industry and I thought to pursue it full time.
Events industry in central India was maturing with a lot of unexplored corners, where I believed a professional approach towards Event Management Practice was needed in the region. I trusted my abilities and skills and with support from my family, I set out to establish my company to serve the niche.
How has Excelsia maintained its momentum?
Even though the start was at a leisurely pace, yet the steps were taken with a positive and focused approach. I was clean about Excelsia's approach anchored by company's values-of a holistic approach towards work and ensuring a healthy working relationship with the client along with high standards of services. Fortune smiled on us in the last quarter of 2017 and we pulled off our pace by accomplishing more multicity projects along with a big breaking deal for a multinational client to host conferences across 50 cities within the country.
Brief us over the offerings of Excelsia.
Our horizon of expertise covers Event Management, Branding, Entertainment, Promotional and Experiential Marketing services. We want to keep our approach simple and honest. We always try to deliver something innovative and add value to what we have promised to all our clients.
What competitive advantage does Excelsia enjoy and why it can't be copied?
Since I have worked on the other side as a client for many years, I had a fair insight of the loopholes and issues about event manager's understanding of the client's expectations and thought to bridge the gap with my consulting and managerial services. Per diem, the event industry bestows me with the opportunity to explore something new with every project and allows me to meet new people.
We distinguish ourselves as superior, flawless and dependable service providers and keep things simple yet astonishing in our Pandora box. I believe to be updated you need to constantly invest in yourself through Local Networking and associations from same industry across the country, keeps updates flowing in. Secondly we are associated with a university to teach event management on weekends. This helps us in staying connected to theory and current practices of the subject, thus keeping us at par with latest trends.
We also work with interns & students who yield lot of positive dynamic energy. Their access to social media skills and young minds get us innovative and creative insights of doing things differently. Excelsia has been actively involved in attending any national or global events, conferences to embrace upcoming trends.
What is your most favourite event genre to work on and why?
We have been associated with the industry since 2012, and fortunately, Excelsia India has experiential learnings from all genre of events covering Institutional events, Corporate activities, Branding and Promotional events, Exhibitions, Fairs and Lifestyle events, Cultural, Festive, Sporting, government projects and mega events. Every event brings new challenges and opportunities to create something niche so I love doing an event of any genre which brings the same. It also allows me to venture into new horizons and challenging tasks that give a sense of achievement and self-satisfaction.
What strategies do you use for dealing with event stress?
Event stress is an inevitable phenomenon occurring due to the short time frame of planning and executing the entire event, constraint budgets and client related, situational etc. One can deal with it by;
Also, as a team, we do a lot of things together like, watching a movie, attending an event together, travelling together – it gives a feeling of being together as a family. Thus, it gets easier to handle stress when managing things together, however, I try to keep my team focused on job in hand during the event.
We keep refining ourselves as per the industry's winds and do not hold back from sharing appreciation where its due.
What criteria do you feel is most important when selecting a venue or event location?
The future: Finally, what's next for Excelsia India and how well equipped are you?
We are building partnerships and association. As we are growing, we are getting connected to more people across the country and regionally. We are in process of formulating a team which includes specialist and industry experts. Fortunately, we have been able to get people on board who have played an instrumental role as the founding pillars of the company. We are in the process of developing our own wing of Event Marketing using social media.
How has been your journey as a leader ?
As a leader, it is important for an individual to be aware of every team member's strength and also be aware of the areas where they can improve on. As a faculty to university students, mentor to interns and staff , it inspires me to channelize their potential by giving them right direction. The journey has been enjoyable and challenging at times.
What is the best advice you would give to someone who is thinking about going into event management?
While selecting a career path, one should have a clear objective rather than going after superficial reasons. Event Management is not an easy area of work and one should have enough passion and willingness to pursue it even in difficult times.
The Chronoscope: Milestones established
