Bollywood stars woo fans with big-ticket stage shows, fuelling the business of event management firms like DNA and Wizcraft.
By the time we begin chatting, Viraf Sarkari, who rarely switches off his mobile, is in New York. “We should chat now,” he says, sounding bright and chirpy at 3 am. “From here we’re headed to Atlanta, then Toronto, Trinidad, LA, Houston — basically lots of places.”
Wow, that’s a lot of travelling. But that’s just Sarkari’s regular routine. After all, he’s the name (along with his two partners, Sabbas Joseph and Andre Timmins) behind some of the biggest shows and events that the country has ever seen.
The recent Unforgettable “Bachchan” Tour has been organised by Wizcraft, the company that Sarkari founded two decades ago. In fact, he’s in New York for one of the concerts that’s just got over to a packed house. “All tickets were sold out,” he sighs, “It was a dream 20 years ago to do a truly heart-stopping, scintillating show. Unforgettable Tour is the culmination of that dream.”
Sarkari isn’t alone in the business of converting dreams into reality. Yes, he’s been the catalyst behind getting the complete Bachchan parivaar close, very close, to fans scattered all over the world. There’s also the dapper-looking Mohammad Morani of Morani Brothers’ fame.
In the business of organising events for the past five decades, the company which began as Morani Fireworks (way back in 1937, the reason it is also referred to as the “first family of fireworks”) has already done 5,000-odd shows complete with pyrotechnics and other snazzy effects.
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Interestingly, Mohammad started out as an actor (he acted with Sunny Deol in Arjun) but moved on to set up a separate entertainment division, Cineyug, to manage sound systems and live concert lighting for stage shows and award functions in 1989. What led him to abandon acting and get into expanding the family business was a stunning stage show that he witnessed in London’s Wembley Park. “It was what I dreamt of bringing to India,” he says, getting ready for some extensive touring in different parts of the world for Shahrukh Khan’s Temptation Reloaded tour.
Mohammad knew that the film industry was just beginning to get noticed by the Indian diaspora scattered in different parts of the globe. In a bid to cash in on Bollywood, which ironically was going though its worst phase in the mid 80s and early 90s, Mohammad organised a show in the US and Canada with Aamir Khan and Juhi Chawla called Chamakte Sitare. The show was a huge success and gradually Morani Brothers moved from being just another live show company to one of the biggest event companies in India.
The new generation of Moranis (Mohammad is now assisted by his two brothers, Ali and Karim) is now behind shows which cost not less than Rs 40-50 crore and star some of the biggest names in Bollywood. In fact, besides Temptations Reloaded, which was announced around the same time as the Bachchans’ Unforgettable Tour, Mohammad has also organised City of Dreams, a Rs 2 crore, 150-minute musical served Broadway-style (it served as the launch-pad for Mohammad’s wife, Nasreen), complete with 13 set changes and 450 costume changes. Last year, Morani Brothers was behind Shilpa Shetty’s musical Miss Bollywood. “We are stepping into theatre now. The time is perfect,” says Mohammad.
Mohammad is right. But Venkat Vardhan, the man behind DNA, another very successful company that has in the past brought international names like Bryan Adams, Yanni, Rolling Stones, Mark Knopfler, Sir Elton John, Roger Waters, Shakira, Aerosmith, Iron Maiden, Ricky Martin and Enrique Iglesias to India, laughs: “Two decades ago, the scene was very different. Today youngsters are proud to be a part of DNA. When I stepped in, it was hardly even a career option.”
Coming from a humble middle-class background, Vardhan was a state-level badminton champion from Bangalore armed with a degree in mechanical engineering. He changed tracks to advertising but soon realised that he wanted to do something unique, something different. “I wanted to create a niche in the area of promotions and that was the thought behind DNA.”
Sarkari agrees that India was very new to event management two decades ago. “If I may say so, Wizcraft actually coined the term ‘event management’ for Indian audiences,” he says. Having completed his hotel management, Sarkari met his future partner DJ Andre at Xanadu, a popular pub in Mumbai. “I saved one lakh rupees somehow, borrowing money from aunts, uncles, my parents and became a partner in that pub and starting organizing events,” he explains.
“We later invested our money in another pub near Mumbai airport. When that succeeded, we moved to Delhi and launched Fireball, another successful pub/discotheque, and soon we were getting invited to organise events in other places too,” he says. Since events became Wizcraft’s forte — they were soon joined by Sabbas Joseph, a journalist who had met the duo to interview them, but ended up becoming a partner — the trio gradually started organising live events for a huge number of audiences.
Today, the company has 500-odd employees and has clocked a turnover of Rs 150 crore. “My parents were hesitant at first; they’re so simple that they just couldn’t understand why people would break into a dance on seeing filmstars,” laughs Sarkari, mouthing last-minute instructions to a colleague at around 3.40 am for the next round of the Unforgettable Tour.
And as audiences get ready to yell and scream and faint at the sight of their favourite superstars, for Sarkari, Vardhan and Mohammad, the day has just begun.