Hyderabad as a city may have managed to play catch up with Bangalore and Chennai in the south in sectors like information technology and biotechnology, but it is way behind them in terms of how it perceives event management.

"Hyderabad still has a long way to go in the event management sector," according to Rajesh K V, general manager, sales (south), of Mumbai-based Wizcraft International Entertainment Private Limited, the leading event management company in India. That has, however, not stopped them from putting their best foot forward and drumming up business.

According to estimates by the Federation of Indian Chambers of Commerce and Industry (Ficci), the event management industry has the potential to grow from Rs 580 crore (Rs 5.80 billion) in 2003 to Rs 1,400 crore (Rs 14 billion) in 2008.

Wizcraft is, therefore, positive on tapping the city's potential in the near future. The Rs 120-crore (Rs 1.20 billion) event management company is now in talks with various departments of the state government to see how best event management can help them realise their objectives. "Tourism has a great potential as far as event management is concerned," Rajesh points out.

Wizcraft has the credit of organising the Afro Asian Games and National Games in Hyderabad. "The previous state government was active in terms of organising the sports events. We are expecting the new government also to play a pro-active role in holding similar events," Rajesh says.

Citing reasons for the lack of enthusiasm in the city for event management, Rajesh says, "There are not many people in the city who like to pay for major events. This apart, restricted timings also play spoilsport."

With entertainment events usually being sponsored events the importance of gaining visibility through sponsorships is also lacking. "Corporates in the city usually like to get visibility only through editorial content," Rajesh says.

"It also does not help that most people here believe that event management is infrastructure business, although it involves much more than that. It is still an unorganised sector," Rajesh says.

"Most of the events that happen in this city are on the corporate side, like seminars, conferences and so on. There are not many patrons for major entertainment extravaganzas over here," Neetant Arora, manager (business development), Wizcraft, says.

Wizcraft is the first Indian event management company to organise international events with one of them being Indian International Film Awards. It operates through liaison officers and also owns properties abroad.