Indian DiGiCo workshop meets with acclaim
Published: ASIA
INDIA: Rivera International, DiGiCo’s Indian distributor, hosted a full day of demos, workshop and seminars in the calm confines of the Colonial Club in Mumbai this week. Although the event was designed to focus primarily on introducing attendees to the new DiGiCo SD10 and SD11 desks, product specialist, James ‘Digger’ Bradley also took the opportunity to present the SD8 and SD9 desks to a large audience of just over 100 people. Interspersed with the DIGiCo introductions, Christian Stumpp from HK Audio also flew in to showcase the Elements and Icon range of speakers.
Coming directly from the Palm Expo exhibition in Beijing, Mr Bradley was enthusiastic about the seminar. ‘This is probably the biggest workshop I’ve done here in India. I started the presentation with a brief introduction to the company, history about the development of the product and then a bit more about the technology for the entire range of products. There’s also been a chance for Q&A and some hands on time.
‘It’s been pretty busy but there have been lots of good questions and I’ve seen lots of really qualified people including engineers and rental companies. I’ve had some genuine questions towards purchasing potential, configuration questions – what will work with what, if I buy this now what will I need for the future, all those sorts of things. It’s taken a few years for people to believe that DiGiCo are actually real about this market and that they’re sticking with it, but we’ve now got a few more references and sales under our belt and that makes a big difference. DiGiCo is now on their minds more seriously – today there are lot of people I’ve seen before but also a lot of new people too.’
Christian Stumpp of HK Audio was equally positive about the turn out and reaction: ‘This morning went very well and the attendance was really astonishing, a nice double headline show for me! We are just starting distribution in India so I gave the audience a brief overview on who we are, the factory, what we do and the other markets we are involved in. I concentrated on two products as examples – Elements, which is our latest baby, showcasing its flexibility and scalability, and Icon which is the latest product to be added to our concert sound series. It’s been very good and it means a lot that Rajesh (Sadarangani) has bothered to do something like this. Overall, a very well prepared day and you don’t always get such a good turnout at workshops like this.’
Owner of rental company Groove Temple, Kaveer Shahani was pleased he’d come along. ‘Events like today are very important to the Indian industry, it does a lot to enhance the learning curve here but I also think that one day for such a vast subject like audio engineering is too short,’ he explained. ‘Today has been extremely well attended and well put together by Rajesh and I think we should have more of these as more education is definitely needed. These events are lacking in the Indian market and there are many companies in India where the technical expertise leaves a lot to be desired.’
Rivera International owner Rajesh Sadarangani pronounced himself ‘very pleased with the turnout, we’ve put on a serious event today. We’ve had people here ready right from the start, some have driven down over a 1,000km. Others have flown in from different states and reorganised their appointments to be here so that’s a good sign. For this year, I wanted a mix of attendees – rental companies, engineers, TV guys, installers and we’ve achieved that. I would like to do this more regularly as it’s a great chance to meet so many people but we would include different product lines each time. It’s moving in the right direction though.’
While demonstrations were taking place on Sound.com’s recently purchased SD10 desk, the rental company’s senior sound engineer Sunil Karanjikar looked on happily. ‘It’s amazing that everyone has been able to experience the products from the ground up, which is what most of the people here need,’ he enthused. ‘You don’t need too much expertise to attend something like this. It’s been very well laid out for a one day introduction. If you need a full technical run down you would need more time and more hands on experience.
‘For the amount of time we had and what this was intended to be it was very good, it’s a clear overview. I’ve seen a lot of other rental companies here in the audience, from small ones to larger ones, regional as well as those from the mainstream. I’ve also spotted visiting engineers who travel around with bands – it’s been a great attendance. It’s time that people realise that line arrays aren’t the only solution, they need to look around in the market.’
Mr Karanjikar added however that more events outside of large cities were required. ‘We need a lot more events like this but they need to go into lot more places outside the metro towns. Accommodation in Bombay is expensive. If owners are also here for the Palm show then it’s a long time to get them to leave their companies. It’s a busy time of year, out of the 12 engineers in our company I am the only one that has been able to spare the time to come.’