“We are striving to establish Yashobhoomi (IICC) as the go-to destination for trading, investment, and business entertainment, so that it becomes synonymous with future investment opportunities for those outside India, much like search engines are for information.”
Given your extensive background in hospitality management and tourism, how have your past experiences shaped your approach to leading KINEXIN-IICC Yashobhoomi Operating Company?
- I have been working for Korea’s largest tradeshow and convention centre(KINTEX) over the last 20 years, now I am here to make Yashobhoomi venue global and successful as the CEO of Yashobhoomi Operating Company(KINEXIN Convention Management)
- In KINTEX, I have developed numerous international tradeshow and convention businesses, and as a part of that, we started this Yashobhoomi project(IICC) back in 2018
As someone deeply involved in the exhibition industry, what trends do you foresee will shape the future of large-scale events and exhibitions globally?
- Clearly, ESG will have a major impact on all venue and exhibition business as global events will look for how to make the event more carbon-free and sustainable
- I personally think various types of local industry exhibitions will be organized more aggressively as we’ve learned from Covid19 that local exhibitions were less affected by the pandemic than all kinds of global/international tradeshows
- Specialized industry specific forums, conferences and seminars as well as large scale corporate events will be fastly increasing in numbers
- Various types of digital events will be additionally developed but they will not be threatening physical shows, rather, they will add fun factors to physical shows and conferences
IICC Yashobhoomi aims to set a benchmark in the exhibition industry. What innovative practices or strategies are you implementing to achieve this goal?
- Together with Yashobhoomi venue, we’d like to connect all buyers and visitors to all notable national tourism attractions, national heritages and industrial clusters for various technical site-inspections, we are promoting these when we propose our venue to global event planners
- We are endeavoring to become Go-Digital / paperless venue, we’re sharing all of our venue proposals and promotional in digital methods mainly instead printing out huge paper materials, recommending organizers for the same efforts. And we’re interested in providing benefits and extra supports to organizers who are endeavoring to organize carbon-free shows in this ESG era to make all business events more sustainable
- We are trying our hardest to internationalize our venue by attracting global brand events(tradeshows, conventions and events) and now about 70% of our events are international ones
In your opinion, how can venue like Yashobhoomi contribute to the economic development of their respective regions?
- Attracting numerous foreign buyers and visitors by hosting/attracting numerous number of global brand tradeshows brings a huge economic impact to the economy and India business investment
- We’re not only courting many global business events but also connecting businesses to many global investors in Korea, USA, Singapore, UK and others through out global networks, encouraging them to visit our planned shows and examine exhibition participants for their possible business investment, I’m now working on such measure to increase this kind of aggressive investment opportunities with government, global investors and also with our stakeholders
What role do you believe educational initiatives and professional standards, like those promoted by the National Competency Standard Exhibition Expert Committee, play in the advancement of the exhibition industry?
- I think India tradeshow industry should develop the measures to bring more attention of visitors and participants to how to do business better by participating in Indian shows
- If exhibition organizers could develop additional sectoral seminars, buyer matching events, get-togethers with investors, special interaction events even amongs all exhibitors, that would be able to add more synergy to the shows that they are organizing, and I am always interested in creating a better tradeshow business models with organizers
- I’m also keely interested in finding out niche market event topics for national show organizers, I can help their show item search for their future businesses and I am even now creating and developing 3-5 such new item shows with Indian/global organizers
Looking ahead, what is your vision for the future of Yashobhoomi and the broader exhibition and events industry in the next five to ten years?
- We are making out efforts to make the Yashobhoomi(IICC) venue become the centre of trading, investment and business entertainment to the extent that when people outside of India think about future investment opportunities, they automatically think about Yashobhoomi just like they look for search engines when they need to seek any information
