Festive period helping Imagica fight slowdown blues

Festival period is bringing cheer to the business of Adlabs Entertainment’s Imagica after witnessing a slump due to economic slowdown.

Talking to Moneycontrol, Raveendra Singh, Head of Marketing, Sales & Strategy, Adlabs Entertainment Limited, said, “This year, the economic slowdown has impacted discretionary business. In October, we saw people postponing their plans. During the first three weeks of October, we were seeing a 20 percent decline year-on-year.”

But business is picking up in the festive period. “In the last 10 days of October and the first week of November, business has picked up thanks to Diwali and festivals. We are seeing lesser signs of slowdown now.”

It is this pickup in business which will help Imagica maintain its growth levels.

“Till last year, we have been growing seven-odd percent and we expect to close the year at similar levels,” said Singh.

Explaining how important the festival and peak periods are for Imagica’s business, Singh said, “April-May -June which is Q1 and October-November-December which is Q3, these periods are our biggest contributors to business in terms of footfall and revenue. Two-thirds or 65 percent of our business comes from these six months. So, you understand how seasonal this business is. So, festive and summer vacations are high dependency for us. We see 10,000-plus footfalls or 14,000 on a single day during a festive period as compared to overall annual average of 2,000 to 3,000 footfalls in a day.”

During these periods, the highest contributions come from the family audience.

“During festive and summer vacation periods, we see high engagement of family audience. The family contribution goes as high as 75 percent, so 3/4th of our audience is family in these periods. Contribution of younger working adults till the age of 35 during February and March becomes 50 percent. During leaner periods, we see a lot of contribution from corporate outings as well,” he said.

Any expansion plans on cards?

While Imagica has no plans to expand its footprints to other markets as Singh said recreating something at Imagica’s level is not justified, the company is looking at the franchise model.

“We are approaching a smaller model across different cities. One current expansion plan is tying up with third-party amusement park providers who will create a smaller version of Imagica in Amravati,” he said.

Top markets for Imagica

No doubt that Mumbai and Pune are the top markets for Imagica but the regional breakup of the footfalls is interesting to note.

“It (Imagica) is a physical destination, so you have to have a lot of people coming in from the city that you are in so Mumbai and Pune put together constitutes 70 percent of our business, both footfall and revenue. In addition to this, Gujarat lays a major role inbound traffic. Around 20-odd percent business comes from Gujarat. Other than that, the 10 percent we get is from outside Maharashtra like Indore, Bengaluru, Hyderabad and Jaipur,” said Singh.

Imagica betting big on the wedding segment

In the six years of operations, Imagica has added incremental offerings every year. This has helped the company grow the footfalls from 8.5 lakh in the first year to 15 lakh.

One such offering is their wedding segment which, according to them, has a lot of potential.

“In 2015-16, we launched the Novatel Hotel and that is when we were able to start fulfilling weddings as a proposition because of the place for a stay and that way it could act as a venue for us. Since September 2018, we have been able to increase the capacity of Novatel. So, earlier it was 216 keys and now it operates at full capacity of 287 keys. So, with a large inventory, it is now possible to service weddings that are large in size,” said Singh.

Annually, Imagica has been able to conduct 10 to 15 large-scale weddings and see a potential of taking the number to 30 weddings a year with 3,000 guests.

Plans for 2020

For next year, Imagica plans to launch two or three properties in terms of experiences in Q1.