For decades, India’s events industry was built largely through experience. Professionals learnt by shadowing seniors, working long hours on-site, solving last-minute problems, learning from vendors and clients, and gradually developing an instinct for what makes an event work. Much of that knowledge was passed down informally, from one professional to another.
That model is now being tested at the scale of the industry itself. EEMA estimates that India’s broader experience economy, spanning live events, weddings, MICE and cultural experiences, was worth approximately $32.2 billion in 2024 and is projected to nearly double to $59.2 billion by 2029–30, growing at 16–18% annually. The organised live events segment is expanding just as rapidly. According to the FICCI-EY Media & Entertainment report, it grew by 44% in 2025 to INR 145 billion and is expected to reach INR 196 billion by 2028. The growth is being driven by a wider mix of ticketed experiences, concerts, weddings, government events, religious gatherings and brand activations.
But scale brings another question: who will build and run this increasingly sophisticated industry?
The numbers point to an industry that is not only growing, but becoming more demanding. As events become more specialised, technology-led and connected to business outcomes, the industry needs professionals who can do more than execute. They need to understand audiences, creativity, production, business, technology, strategy and the responsibility that comes with creating experiences at scale.
That makes the question of how the industry educates its next generation increasingly relevant. On the occasion of Teachers’ Day, we at EVENTFAQS Media spoke to five industry leaders helping shape that transition, each approaching the question from a different point on the professionalisation journey.
Subhash Ghai: Opening the Mind to Possibilities
As a filmmaker, producer, director and Founder and Chairman of Whistling Woods International, Subhash Ghai has spent decades shaping India’s creative landscape and nurturing talent across the media and entertainment industry. His perspective on education stems from this experience of working at the intersection of creativity, storytelling and industry practice. For Ghai, the question beneath any creative curriculum is simple: how do young professionals learn to observe, interpret and think?
Subhash Ghai believes creative education cannot be reduced to information or formulas. As he explains, “I have always believed that education is not about filling a young person’s mind with information; it is about opening the mind to possibilities. In creative industries, you cannot simply teach a formula and expect someone to create something extraordinary. Whether it is cinema, events or any experience-led industry, educators must teach students to observe people, understand society and culture, and understand themselves. A student must ultimately take responsibility for their own learning. Teachers can guide, but curiosity and self-study must continue beyond the classroom. Technical skills can be learnt, and technology will keep changing.”
“At Whistling Woods International, we encourage students to explore, experiment, use different resources and learn from failure. The best learning happens when students recognise their own strengths and limitations and actively work on both,” he adds.
That emphasis on observation becomes particularly relevant in an industry built around human attention and emotion. Ghai believes technology will transform events, but cannot replace the ability to understand people: “Technology will change the face of the events industry, but it will never replace the human being who understands another human being. You can have the best technology, biggest stage and most spectacular effects, but if you cannot touch the audience’s emotions, the experience will disappear when the lights go off.”
For Ghai, the professionals who lead the next chapter will therefore combine art and business, imagination and discipline, technological awareness and human understanding, while continuing to learn beyond formal education.
Tanaz Basrur: Learning to Create Experiences, Not Just Events
With 45 years of experience across events, experiential marketing, weddings and social celebrations, Tanaz Basrur, Event Professional, Wedding Planner & Curator, and Author, has witnessed several generations of change in the industry. A core faculty member at leading institutes, she brings to the classroom the perspective of a practitioner who has spent decades navigating the realities of events and experiences. While technology has transformed workflows, weddings have become more elaborate and experiences more immersive, Basrur believes one thing remains constant: people are at the heart of the profession.
That belief shapes her first lesson for aspiring professionals: “Don’t just learn how to create an event. Learn how to create an experience. There is a difference. An event has a date, a venue, a schedule and a production plan. An experience has emotion. It has a story. It makes people feel seen, valued, surprised, delighted or inspired. And that is where the real magic lies.”
But creating experiences, in her view, still begins with getting the fundamentals right. The glamour associated with the industry can sometimes obscure the practical skills required to deliver an event successfully. Basrur’s advice is to focus first on becoming good at the work itself.
“Don’t be in a hurry to become successful. Be in a hurry to become good. Learn the fundamentals. Understand production. Understand budgets. Learn how to negotiate. Learn how to communicate. Learn to work with people who are very different from you. Learn how to handle pressure. Learn how to solve problems without announcing that there is a problem! And please remember, creativity without execution is only an idea. Our event industry needs dreamers, but it also needs doers,” Tanaz Basrur advises.
That discipline also means looking beyond the glamour. Basrur points to the hundreds of decisions, negotiations, rehearsals, spreadsheets, site visits and contingency plans behind every spectacular event. Her answer is the idea of the “passionpreneur”: build expertise around what excites you, but understand the business required to sustain it. “Passion can get you started. Professionalism will make you last,” she shares.
Her recently released book, The Event Professional’s Playbook, extends that philosophy. Basrur says she wanted to create something practical rather than romanticise the industry, covering areas from production and weddings to sponsorships, artist management, technology and AI, safety, ROI and leadership. Underlying that effort is a sense of responsibility towards the people who enter the profession after her. Clients, she notes, are entrusting professionals with a moment in their life or a chapter in their brand’s story.
For Basrur, teaching, mentoring and writing are also forms of giving back, allowing decades of experience to become useful to the professionals who follow.
Jateen Rajput: Turning Tribal Knowledge Into Professional Wisdom
Jateen Rajput, Dean at Bhavan’s College’s Management School of Events & Experience Design (MSEED), approaches education through one of the industry’s oldest habits: learning by doing, often without a system for preserving what has been learnt.
As Jateen Rajput puts it, “For over three decades the Indian events industry has trained its people by accident. We have learnt by trying, experimenting, risking, failing and finding ways and means to ‘get things done’. The skill has moved from one person to the next through apprenticeship, adrenaline and sometimes luck. Nobody ever wrote it down. So every time a good production manager quit, a small library burnt down with him. That is our blind spot. We mistook survival for skill, and jugaad for a system.”
The answer, Rajput argues, is not to replace experience with theory, but to turn individual experience into knowledge that can be shared, referenced and improved. That means building common vocabulary and standards around areas such as safety, contracts, financial understanding and technical decision-making. He summarises that shift in one line: “An industry becomes a profession the day its knowledge stops living only in people’s heads and is available as a reference to improvise, re-learn or unlearn.”
That belief also shapes how Rajput approaches the classroom. If the industry is ultimately experienced on the ground, then education needs to replicate some of that reality. “But in my knowledge, theory alone produces excellent spectators. So each classroom has to smell like a venue,” he says, describing an approach in which students work with real vendors, deadlines and mistakes while applying theory in practice.
Mentorship, too, needs to be deliberate rather than incidental. Rajput believes working professionals, real client briefs and vendor negotiations should form part of the learning process. In his words, “I believe, mentorship has to be scheduled, not hoped for.” He also sees value in teaching failure rather than treating it simply as something students should encounter later in their careers. Simulating something going wrong and conducting a post-mortem without blame, he argues, can prepare professionals for the unpredictability of live environments in ways another academic module may not.
The larger ambition is to create an industry where knowledge does not disappear when individuals move on, but becomes part of a stronger professional ecosystem.
Sushma Gaikwad: Preparing Thinkers, Not Just Executors
As Co-founder of Ice Global and Wizcraft MIME, Sushma Gaikwad sees talent development as inseparable from the rapid growth of the events and experiential industry. For her, the challenge is not simply creating more professionals, but building talent with the mindset, adaptability and resilience to thrive in a changing industry.
Gaikwad believes this starts with “mindset before methodology.” Sharing her perspective on the industry’s talent needs, she says, “The Indian events and experiential industry is growing at an extraordinary pace, and with that growth comes a very real talent gap. As educators, our responsibility is not merely to create skilled professionals, but to create industry-ready professionals who have the right mindset, adaptability and resilience to thrive in this dynamic ecosystem.”
She also believes education must bring theory and real-world exposure together. Explaining this approach, Gaikwad says, “Theory provides the foundation for understanding the ‘why’, while experience teaches the ‘how’,” with simulations, live projects and industry exposure helping students connect the two.
For Gaikwad, however, the objective goes beyond producing students who can execute a brief. She believes education should develop professionals who understand the wider business and creative ecosystem. As she puts it, “We need to move beyond creating students who can simply execute a brief. Our objective should be to develop strategic thinkers, problem-solvers, leaders and ultimately entrepreneurs and intrapreneurs who can understand the larger business and creative ecosystem of events.”
That principle extends to internships. Gaikwad believes students should not be reduced to runners or volunteers on event floors, but should receive meaningful exposure, responsibility and mentorship through structured learning experiences.
Sushma Gaikwad sees education as part of building the industry’s future talent ecosystem. Describing this larger responsibility, she says, “Ultimately, our responsibility as educators is to harness the ecosystem of event management to create the ecosystem of talent that its future demands. We are not just preparing students for the industry that exists today; we are helping build the professionals who will shape the industry of tomorrow.”
Education, in this view, is not simply responding to the industry’s talent needs. It is helping shape the professionals who will define what comes next.
Meghaa Ghosh: Earning a Seat at the Strategy Table
With 22 years of experience and more than 750 events across live entertainment, experiential marketing, IPs, brand solutions and content, Meghaa Ghosh brings deep industry and education experience. A three-time founder, creative producer, director, educator and IP creator, she is Founder & CEO of Fierce Ventures, serves as Course Head for Event Planning & Experiential Marketing at Xavier Institute of Communications, and contributes to EEMA’s national education and upskilling initiatives.
For Ghosh, education must go beyond teaching live events to building curiosity and confidence. Sharing her perspective, she says, “Education’s most important job isn’t teaching students what live events are — it’s instilling the discipline of curiosity: making it second nature to keep learning, daring & doing, long after they think they’ve learned enough.” She also identifies self-doubt as a key barrier for young talent, saying, “The single biggest block I see in young talent isn’t a skills gap. It’s a self-imposed one: ‘I’m not creative,’ ‘I’m not a numbers person,’ ‘that’s not my strength.’ My job as an educator is to dismantle those inhibitions.”
Meghaa’s larger argument is about the industry’s position within business. Ghosh believes education can help move events from execution towards strategy by developing stronger commercial and strategic thinking. As she explains, “Every cohort that graduates with real strategic & commercial thinking alongside their craft is a cohort that walks into a room commanding a seat at the strategy table, not just the delivery table. That shift — from execution to strategic partner — is what actually grows this industry’s budgets, influence & ambition.”
This philosophy shapes her approach at XIC, where industry leaders and hands-on live projects form part of the learning process. Ghosh says, “The bridge between the classroom & the industry isn’t something you build once & hand students at graduation. It’s something they have to walk across, hands-on, while they’re still students.” She reinforces this with a practical approach: “Case studies are the bare minimum — the floor, not the ceiling. My students at XIC go deep into real, live, on-ground projects. They don’t dip a toe in — they walk out having already done the work most graduates only encounter in their first real job.”
For Ghosh, this is ultimately how academia and industry come together: “The gap between academia & industry closes the moment educators stop treating ‘real-world experience’ as an internship add-on & start treating it as the curriculum itself.”
The Industry Is Learning to Remember
Taken together, these perspectives reveal a larger transition in Indian events education. Ghai emphasises curiosity, observation and human understanding. Basrur brings the discipline of experience creation, execution and professionalism. Rajput argues for turning informal industry knowledge into systems that can be transferred. Gaikwad calls for strategic thinkers rather than brief executors. Ghosh pushes that thinking further, towards an industry where event professionals have a place in shaping strategy itself.
Their approaches differ, but the direction is consistent. An industry that once learnt largely by accident increasingly needs to learn by design.
As live events, experiential marketing, weddings and entertainment continue to expand, the classroom is becoming another place where the industry builds its future workforce. The real test will not be how much students can reproduce from a syllabus, but whether they can enter an unpredictable live environment, understand the people around them, make sound decisions, solve problems, create something meaningful and continue learning after the event is over.
For an industry built on experiences, perhaps its most important investment now is learning how to pass on the knowledge, judgement and curiosity that make those experiences possible.
