Visitor traffic to the 35th edition of the India International Jewellery Show (IIJS) 2018 soared past the 40,000 mark for the first time in the history of the show, with the numbers resulting in significant business being transacted as well. The halls continued to be relatively full and many booths were still fairly packed with visitors even in the post-lunch sessions, something not too common on the final day of such a large show.

“Exhibitors and visitors alike have greatly appreciated the changes we introduced this year, according to feedback received by committee members personally as well as information gathered by our IIJS teams,” said GJEPC Chairman Pramod Agrawal, speaking at a press meet today. “We not only had a new hall and about 800 new booths, but we had visitors from all over the country and many from abroad, including official delegations from 15 countries.”

While numbers tell part of the story, they do not fully capture the overwhelmingly positive sentiment on the exhibition floor.

Pointing to the changes in layout, with an extra hall allowing for bigger stalls and extra space as some of the other reasons behind the success of the show, Agrawal said that everyone had done “good business.”  He added that Council “does not try to quantify the actual turnover or numbers of deals struck, but from the inputs we have received almost everyone has done better than in earlier years”.

Most exhibitors agreed that the business transacted was significantly higher than in the last few years; while many quantified it as a “double-digit increase”, a few even shared that when they finally tallied the figures, they were expecting them to be possibly more than twice that of the earlier year.

GJECPC Vice Chairman Colin Shah described the show as a reflection of “the definite vibrancy in the market at present”. He said, “The success of the India story is reflected in the energy seen at the show,” and added, “With the Indian economy performing well, there is a strong hope that the industry is entering a period of prosperity.”

Both Agrawal and Shah emphasised that there was no relaxation in norms related to visitor entry and the increased numbers were a result of the growing reputation of the show as well as the sustained efforts to market the show in all parts of the country. “We continue to screen all applications and do our utmost to ensure that these are legitimate trade visitors and genuine buyers only,” they stated.

Reaffirming that the GJEPC was committed to maintaining IIJS as a B2B show only, Sabyasachi Ray, ED added that the registration process was likely to become “100% online from next year which would facilitate using GST or CIN / TAN numbers to not only identify every visitor, but also link every individual to the company to which s/he belonged.”

Congratulating the IIJS committee and Council staff, the Chairman said, “The new CoA that assumed office in January this year wanted to make the show bigger and better, and the IIJS committee and GJEPC staff have achieved much more than we hoped for. IIJS has now reached really international levels, and were it not for the constraints of infrastructure available we would have raised the bar even higher.”

He went on to say that “work on next year’s show begins tomorrow” and “we have requested exhibitors and visitors to provide us feedback with suggestions on how to improve”.

Convener of GJEPC’s National Exhibitions Committee, which steers IIJS, Shailesh Sangani has promised that there will be further changes in the 36th edition. 

This year we extended our international promotional programme and welcomed visitors from 15 countries including China, Vietnam, Myanmar, Saudi Arabia, Singapore, UK, UAE, Qatar, Kuwait, Malaysia, Bangladesh, Nepal, Iran, Australia and Sri Lanka, he told the media during an informal interaction. “We now have covered virtually all the regions in the neighbourhood – be it the Middle East, South Asia and now large parts of South East Asia too,” he said, and will seek to consolidate and grow this in the coming years.”

The follow up and extension of this drive will be continued in tandem with GJEPC’s international committee, Sangani said, adding that the India Australia Jewellery Buyer Seller Meet held just before the IIJS was one such initiative. “It was a good success,” he said.

The show too will expand in size. “We will definitely increase the number of stalls next year and accommodate more companies from the waiting list,” Sangani asserts. “The committee is looking at various options to achieve this. One possibility is to move some sections of the show to a new venue, like say the upcoming Reliance Convention Centre at BKC, if it is ready and deemed suitable,” he says.

“But, even if a new venue is not identified in time to do this by the 2019 show, we will implement some plans to ensure that more booths are added within the present location itself,” he says with confidence. Among other plans on the anvil are a special section for silver jewellery, seamless interconnection between halls, even smoother entry and exit and much more.

“While it is too early to share any details now, it will certainly take forward the successes we have achieved this year,” Sangani concludes.

Pic caption: Crowds thronged the exhibition halls on all five days of IIJS 2018