IMG's India Team: Front, sitting (L to R) Zubin Sarkari, Director (Fashion Events), Shantanu Chatterji, Head of programme (TWI), Standing (L to R) Nidhi Choudhary, Director, Events, Jamie Stewart, Director (Sales), Ravi Krishnan, MD, IMG-TWI South Asia, Rishi Narain, GM (Business Development India)

The mid-day sun is relentless over Chennai's Nungambakkam Stadium, arguably India's most modern tennis facility. Inside, the 5,800-seat stadium is abuzz with activity: walkie-talkies crackle with orders, smartly clad boys and girls energetically crisscross the court. Chairs are carted in, two girls sprint in, precariously balancing silver trophies, while a few of their male counterparts, well-endowed in the muscles department, heave and haul large fluorescent-blue signboards imprinted Tata Open. And Ravi Krishnan stands amidst it all, quietly taking it all in from a vantage position on centre court, baseball cap turned backwards in a way that is no longer fashionable, squinting at a four-page run order through dark shades. Krishnan is supervising a dry run for the next day's award ceremony and the stage has to be set in three minutes flat. The rehearsal ends; 40-odd heads turn expectantly towards Krishnan. The athletic 34-year-old wipes his brow, takes a quick gulp from a Diet Pepsi and shakes his head from side to side. Not quite there, interprets Event Director Nidhi Choudhary. And it begins all over. Four dry runs later. Krishnan finally relents.

Acing events comes naturally to Ravi Krishnan, Managing Director, IMG-India and South Asia, because that's what he does for a living. The company he heads is the Indian subsidiary of the $1.25-billion (Rs 6,000 crore) IMG Group, founded by former Yale Law School graduate, Mark H. McCormack. And the 2003 Tata Open (it ended on January 5 with Thailand's Paradorn Srichaphan winning the singles crown) is the latest feather in IMG India's cap. In the seven years IMG has been in India, it has organised some of the most high-profile sports and fashion events the country has seen-the Royal Challenge Indian Open Golf, the Sahara (Cricket) Cup, and the Lakme India Fashion Week. The agency has also been responsible for some high-profile visits-Boris Becker, Patrick Rafter, Vijay Singh and Carlos Moya. But call Krishnan an event manager, and the former corporate lawyer at Clayton UTZ, Australia's largest commercial law firm, shudders. "We call ourselves a sports, lifestyle and entertainment marketing company, with events being only one of the different marketing solutions on offer," he clarifies in a pronounced Australian twang. Internationally, IMG isn't just about events. There's celebrity management that started it all; golfing legend Arnold Palmer was IMG's first client. And former clients still swear by it. "We've been partners longer than my wife," banters former IMG client and tennis star Vijay Amritraj. "They not only took care of all my hassles and left me to play-which is what every athlete does best-but also made sure that I earned four-to-five times more off the court." Tiger Woods, Pete Sampras, Vijay Singh, The Sisters Williams, and others to whom IMG plays Jerry Maguire will vouch for that.

IMG doesn't just advise its clients on how to enhance their brand value but also provides expertise, contacts and specialised services to individuals and organisations that wish to capitalise on the commercial potential of a name or an image. The All England Lawn Tennis Championships? IMG represents it. The British Open Golf tournament? Diito. Then, there is IMG's television arm, TransWorld International, one of the world's largest independent producers and distributors of sports programming-it churns out 6,000 hours of original programming annually. Today, sports and prime-time TV go hand in hand, driving and feeding off each other.

So, is it possible to do what IMG does in India and make money? Actually, yes. IMG India returned revenues of Rs 70 crore last year. And it has been profitable from the very beginning, claims Krishnan, from the time it set up office in India. Predictably, parent IMG Group's Chairman McCormack is thrilled. "We have groomed local talent that has not only performed to world-class standards in India, but has successfully transferred its expertise to various projects around the world," he gushes.

Everything's Event-ual

Events are IMG India's bread and butter; they contribute close to 60 per cent of its revenues-the rest comes from television. That may sound easy, but it involves a gamut of activities from matching events with sponsors (or designing events for companies that have the money to spend and know they want a golf or cricket event but little else), marketing the event, and managing the details. The Tata Open, for instance, was formerly the Gold Flake open but post the ban on surrogate advertising for cigarettes, IMG had to find a new title sponsor for India's only ATP-sanctioned event. That wasn't too difficult for an organisation that found a new sponsor for the Indian cricket team after a similar ban forced ITC's Wills out. Sahara was the sponsor and the deal was worth Rs 100 crore when it was signed in 2001. (The company has now run afoul the International Cricket Council's new anti-ambush marketing caveat, but that's another story).

The event, now in its seventh year running, made marketing sense for the Tata Group which has decided to sponsor it for three years. "Events like these are an ideal example of experiential marketing that will work very well," feels Romit Chatterjee, Vice President (Corporate Affairs), Tata Group. And so, the Tata Group didn't have a problem signing on the dotted line. Not with the kind of benefits IMG listed in its pitch: title sponsorship, an exclusive Tata pavilion at the stadium showcasing all Tata Group companies and a chance to be associated with a world-class sporting event.

Once the deal was struck, IMG's fabled planning machinery got into the act positioning the event (the Tata Open was pitched as a warm-up for the Australian Open, which should be progressing as you read this sentence), recreating the same conditions as Melbourne Park, even using the same balls (Dunlop Fort) and paving over the court with the same fast surface (Play Pave). That's business as usual for the company, swears Events Director Choudhary who sometimes starts planning an event a year ahead. "We have a plan B, a plan C, and a plan D," she grins. "And then we have a contingency plan."

Detailing apart, it is IMG's networking skills and global expertise that floors clients. In lingua franca, that means IMG can guarantee a world-class event because it has organised several thousands of the same around the world, and ensure the participation of some big names because it either represents them or knows someone who does. "IMG is very organised," admits Prakash Nanani, the Chief Operating Officer of the Jumbo Group's Indian operations. "But what we have really benefited the most from is their ability to network globally." For the record, Jumbo spends close to Rs 10 crore a year on golfing events such as the Royal Challenge Indian Golf Open.

The IMG business model is straightforward: it gets a fixed implementation fee for conceptualising and managing an event and it gets a percentage of the sponsorship it generates. The latter, more often than not, exceeds the former, sometimes by a factor of two. To insulate itself from the perils of short-termism, IMG only strikes medium-term deals (three-to-five years). And its television business gives it a nice cushion. In Chennai, the day before the Tata Open final, bleary-eyed head of production, TWI, Shantanu Chatterjee stands in front of a panoply of TV monitors supervising a live seven-camera broadcast. "Even while retaining our leadership in live sports programming, we are diversifying into other areas like fashion, entertainment, and adventure sport." This is so since over the past four years, TWI has seen its contribution to IMG India drop from 70 per cent to 40 per cent now.

Leveraging Local Learnings

With his spiky hair, wraparound shades and nonchalant manner, it is the easiest thing in the world not to take Zubin Sarkari seriously. Yet, with a degree from MIT and extensive work experience on the New York fashion scene, he's the last word at IMG India when it comes to fashion events. The brain behind conceptualising and implementing Lakme India Fashion Week (three years and running) Sarkari has now been entrusted with the task of developing fashion events for IMG all over South-East Asia. "Our learnings here in India have been fantastic and there is no reason why the same can't be replicated given the similarities between India and South-East Asian countries."

Over time, it will be these local learnings that differentiate the winners from the also-rans. For, as Samir Singh, CEO of Bangalore-based WorldTel puts it, "International affiliation alone cannot guarantee you success in this business." Singh is all praise for IMG's structured systems, processes, and reporting structures. As is Sanjay Lal, CEO & Executive Director, Percept D'Mark, one of IMG's competitors in the Indian market. "They are undoubtedly the number one sports management company in the world, though I think they need to spend some more time understanding the Indian customer."

On the sloping walls of Krishnan's office in a repurposed mill in Central Mumbai, framed copies of Sports Illustrated and Vogue rub shoulders with autographed celebrity blow-ups. Surrounded by sundry trophies and stacks of video tapes Krishnan is congratulating his core team on the Tata Open, a job well done. You see, they got that stage done in three minutes flat.