Communication and entertainment company Wizcraft — the first name when it comes to big-ticket events in the country — has turned 30 this year. Credited with bringing Michael Jackson to India in 1996, organising the IIFA Awards at a foreign destination every year and numerous other entertainment, tourism and sporting events, the Mumbai-based company is headed by three friends and partners — Andre Timmins, Sabbas Joseph and Viraf Sarkari. t2 chatted with Andre Timmins on the journey so far and the road ahead.
When you started out 30 years ago, did you ever think that Wizcraft would come this far?
Well, I think these 30 years have flown. We actually started taking note of the fact that we had clocked so many years when we turned 25. We were like, ‘What?! It’s been 25 years?!’ (Laughs) The effort has always been to make the event management industry grow, to contribute something new to the industry every time…. We are not getting younger, but we are very satisfied with how far we’ve come. We kind of made people understand the power and reach of events.
How did you and your business partners — Sabbas Joseph and Viraf Sarkari — think of event management as a profession in the ’80s when most people hadn’t even heard of it?
I was working as a DJ in a hotel called Airport Plaza in Bombay that had a popular nightclub called Takeoff. This was around ’82-’83. Viraf joined the hotel as a management trainee. We became friends and a few years later, we opened a club called Xanadu together. During that time, we met Sabbas, who was a journalist, and he had come to interview us. We got friendly. We started doing a lot of events at the club and seeing the response, we knew that we should do something in entertainment… we felt there was a gap. The three of us opened Wizcraft in 1988.
We started off by doing birthday parties. It was tough to convince people to let us handle their birthday parties when they could it themselves, but we did. We would operate out of a garage initially and then out of a small business centre.
For the first five years, we mostly did birthday parties and weddings. At that time, event management wasn’t looked at in a nice way — very few families wanted their kids to join because they thought it was a night business… they thought event management was dodgy. Slowly, we started doing corporate events. At the same time, we were running quite a few nightclubs in Bombay. In the 1990s, we started doing film award events and beauty pageants. And then in 1996, we brought Michael Jackson to India.
Would you consider that to be the turning point for Wizcraft?
Yes, that made us a household name in India. We did have to give out many free tickets (laughs), but it was definitely a turning point for us. At that time, there was a marketing article written on the three of us that said that these guys have coined the term ‘event management’ in India. After that, it was an upward swing for us. In 2000, we launched IIFA Awards.
With IIFA firmly established in the movie awards space, we haven’t looked back. The journey has been phenomenal. IIFA is not the only international event we do; we regularly collaborate with the governments and tourism ministries of various countries to organise events. We’ve also done some big sporting events like the opening and closing ceremonies of the 2010 Commonwealth Games in Delhi. We also did the Commonwealth Games in Melbourne….
What would you count as Wizcraft’s biggest strength?
That we focused on and invested in our people. We are a service business and people as a resource are very important. From the very beginning, we always focused on getting the right people for the right job. A lot of the senior people at Wizcraft have been with us for 20-25 years.
I know I may sound arrogant, but in India, if there is any event that comes with any kind of value, credibility and reach, Wizcraft will be the one doing it. That’s something we are proud of. Our biggest strength is that we have skilled people who can turn out a major event only in the course of one night.
Where do you think the need gap in this industry is?
The industry is growing by the day. One thing that we haven’t done much of in India is live entertainment. But that, of course, depends on the infrastructure of the country.
What’s the plan over the next 10-15 years?
We plan to keep our brand activation business as the main focus. Then are our properties like IIFA, GIMA (Global Indian Music Academy Awards) and our various sporting events. And the big plan is to make live entertainment bigger. Our focus is to make India part of the touring itinerary for big names in music. For instance, if Bruno Mars now does concerts in Malaysia and Singapore, it’s not necessary that he will come to India. We want to change that.
Theatrical and movie production will also be a focus now. We’ve done Zangoora at Kingdom of Dreams in Gurgaon and Jaane Jigar at Bollywood Parks in Dubai. We brought in a Broadway look and feel to theatricals. We are proud because we have always been leaders, and others have followed our lead.
Priyanka Roy
