Pragati maidan may be huge, but it’s not big enough anymore to accommodate the World’s largest personally visited auto show. The fast growing Indian auto industry has become a magnet for the global auto, accessory and ancillary makers, and the space available at Pragati Maidan cannot accommodate so many participants. The entire space available at the Pragati Maidan got sold within a week, and there is a long queue of prospective participants clamoring for space.
Paragati maidan has about 55000 square meter of space available for exhibition, which, hold your breath, is just about half of the total space required. Now, SIAM, which organizes the show jointly with CII and ACMA is looking at the option of adding another venue for the event to accommodate everyone. Expo Mart at Noida is being considered as an option to accommodate the component makers. This may be a good and a bad thing, as visitors who earlier used to get everything at one place, will now have to make trips to two different locations to be able to see everything. This may impact the number of visitors to their exhibits, and in turn the business as well.
However, there doesn’t seem to be any other solution as there was a severe space crunch last year as well. This means that if alternative arrangements are not made this year, the expo may turn into a total chaos. This is because the number of visitors this year is expected to be much higher than 2 million. Also, the expected number of vehicle launches would be much larger than last year.
The Organizers are also asking the people as to where they would like the Expo to be organized if it were to be shifted from Pragati Maidan. We’d be interested in knowing that too. So here’s a poll
Source: ET
(polls)