India’s events industry runs on a familiar division of labour. Production companies own the client relationship and the creative brief. The structural layer — staging, rigging, automation, flying rigs — is hired in from the market, event by event.
The model works. It also carries a ceiling.
The equity merger of Proverse Media and Event Network sets out to remove it, creating what the two companies call India’s first full-stack event production group: Event Network’s production and client-delivery muscle, paired with Proverse Media’s in-house technical infrastructure — staging, scaffolding, a specialist rigging team, stage-automation systems, artist- and prop-flying systems, and venue constructs including mojo and peripheral barricading.
Ali Safdar Zaidi, the Director who rebuilt Event Network after taking it over in 2022, is blunt: “For years, this industry hired the stage and hoped the vendor turned up. We have stopped hoping — the infrastructure and the people who run it now sit inside one company, answerable to one brief.”
One roof, one brief
Owning the infrastructure rather than sourcing it is not only a cost question — it is a creative one. With rigging and production under one roof, technical and creative decisions stop happening in separate rooms with separate vendors.
“The moment the engineer and the creative are in the same conversation, the guesswork disappears. A complex flying sequence stops being a risk and becomes something you design for from day one,” says Anupam Arora, the Director leading production execution.
For clients, that means fewer handoffs and fewer seams where accountability changes hands. Proverse spent years building the automation and rigging inventory behind tours for Arijit Singh, AR Rahman, Travis Scott and Enrique Iglesias.
“Proverse built the machine; Event Network knows where to point it. Clients get one team that carries an idea from first strategy to final strike,” says Navish Bindra, the Director who led the integration.
A standards play, not a scale play
Both companies are pitching this as an industry upgrade, not a land grab.
“We’re merging to raise the bar for the whole industry. By combining teams, sharing technical expertise, and using safer, higher-quality materials, we’ll deliver bigger, better and safer events for everyone. This is a partnership built for progress — for artists, crews, and audiences alike,” Ali says.
Already in the field
This is not merger-day optimism. Since the announcement, the group has delivered two very different productions back-to-back: an Airtel Advantage experience built around Zakir Khan’s special “Papa Yaar” for 800 handpicked customers produced for OML/Beacon; and “Bismil Ki Mehfil”, staged live in Delhi.
“An announcement is a promise. Delivered events across different formats are proof. We didn’t want to talk about what the merger could do. We wanted the market to watch it happen,” says Param Dhanoa, a Director known for holding timelines and budgets to the wire.
Why “step one”?
Both companies call this step one. Neither will say what step two is.
How large Indian productions are rehearsed, pre-rigged and made road-ready is a question the industry has never answered. International tours solve it with dedicated facilities where the show is rehearsed on the actual set before it leaves the building. India has no equivalent at an international standard.
Rahul Bhasin, Director and founder of Proverse Media, leaves the door open: “Right now an Indian production rehearses in one place, builds in another and finds out what works on show day. That’s backwards. We’ve built the infrastructure — and we’re not done answering where India’s biggest shows are made road-ready.”
