Garba organisers feel the pinch, revise entry fee

Garba organisers in major cities of the state are struggling to find sponsors this Navratri owing to low participation from real estate players and telecom companies, who used to be the mainstay of the business during the nine-day festival.

Organisers claims the number of sponsors and the amount spent on garba events have gone down by over 30 per cent this year.

"Builders spend significantly during Navratri. But this year, many of them do not have much active projects on hand to market. We are seeing that builders with both plotting and housing schemes have a low ad spend for Navratri events. Even leading telecom players who usually co-sponsor events are doing their own brand activities and associate with one prime venue," said Devang Shah, Director of Xpertz Advertising Events, that manages sponsorships for top five garba venues in Ahmedabad, Vadodara, Rajkot and Surat.

Earlier, exclusive venues would price passes anywhere between Rs 700 and Rs 1,500, but this time, the same are being sold for Rs 150 to 500 a day.

"We have not taken part in any Navratri event this year as sponsors because we did not have any new product to market. So we felt it did not make sense to go for sponsorship. In the past, we used to sponsor two to three premium events in Ahmedabad and Vadodara," said Jateen Gupta, MD of J P Infrastructure Pvt Ltd.

This has forced garba organisers in Ahmedabad to keep price of passes minimal despite rising input costs while in Vadodara, they have hiked the prices.

"We get participation from around 18,000 people every day but sponsorship is fixed. As far as tickets are concerned, we have increased the price for boys by Rs 300," said Vikram Gupta, head, event management, CREDAI Aarkee garba, which is organised by a group of 15 builders from Vadodara.

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