“It all started with an idea, an idea to showcase our culture along with
entertainment! Today Incident is one of the biggest college cultural festivals in
India. The glamour, the passion and all else about this festival has attained
unimaginable heights!
We decided that it was time to look back, to reminisce and relive the past
and thus Incident ’14 – The Retro Edition was born.”
T
he hardest part of organising Incident lies in choosing an able, level-headed and determined convenor
who can take the team through all the highs and lows.
But sometimes not everything goes according to plan
and Team Incident had to make a really tough decision just four
months before the fest. A decision that did have its fair share
of controversy, but, as they say - ‘The show must go on’.
Eventually, the post of the convenor had been replaced
by an Organising Secretary(Shashank Alevoor) and a Cultural
Secretary(Anmol Bhattad). As we had our leaders in place, we expected smooth sailing. But as it turned out, the actual task had just
begun. Believe it or not, the Incident ’14 Core team had its first
proper meet only in the month of November. We all realised that
time was of the essence and we had to get our act together to pull
off a decent fest.
Cultural Fest 101 – Procure enough cash and sponsors and donations and you will end up with a super successful fest. We started
our journey to approach, persuade and convince executives from
different companies to help our cause. But marketing is not as simple as it sounds. After a hundred calls and mails, there may be one
company who would be willing to hear the usual rehearsed recitation about Incident. Karthik NS roped in RIL and we had our first
investment. Reliance Industries had always been one of the major
sponsors of the fest. Eight months of constant persuasion, phone
calls, mail exchanges and meetings with the VP and President finally
wooed RIL as the Title Sponsor this year. Little did we know that
the incredible seed amount RIL diverted towards our cause would
demand a lot of PR work during the fest.
Meanwhile the marketing and publicity team were still carrying out basic ground work and forming a game plan for the winter vacations. We realised that although everyone had big ideas and
concep ts for the fest, when it came to raw execution and planning,
most would just shy away from work. Motivating people to contribute was one of our biggest challenges in the early days of the
fest prep. While the bosses of Honeywell, Maiyas, L&T were being
approached in Bangalore, the team in Mangalore was determined to
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The Shoreline
persuade the local banks and companies that investing in Inci was a
wise option. We did strike gold when some of us decided to try our
luck in Mood Indigo IIT-B. One of the leads from Mumbai went
on to bag sponsorship for the Western Night and another was Roy
Zaltsman.
Colleges outside generally judge a fest by its previous editions
and the reputation it has built over the years. The website is an integral part of the whole package and a basic promo site was launched
in December. The plan was to expand it to a killer website to be
launched at least one month before the fest. While we web-developer noobs were busy with other work, DC, RT and team took over
and dedicated most of their time to the site.
Although most of us did get back to college in December, a
sincere meeting was convened only in the first week of January and
the progress of the different aspects were discussed. With just 50
days to go we were in desperate need of some moolah.
A couple of confirmations other than RIL had opened the Inci
account and we started looking for feasible alternatives for our main
Pronite – Encore. Sometimes, this one night defines the whole fest
and we didn’t want to let down our college junta. Some of the options in mind were the evergreen Shankar-Ehsaan-Loy, Mika Singh,
Shreya Ghoshal, Farhan Akhtar and Salim-Sulaiman. But after much
haggling over dates and budget we strongly felt that the Merchant
brother duo fit the bill to perform for the Incident ’14 Encore Night.
With the pricey Encore show eating up most of our budget,
the struggle had just become harder. We got MTS to help out with
the DJ Nite, and this was a big relief for a few days until we realised
there was a lot more left. A round of false publicity and popular
public demand made us book the DJs from Mumbai - The Electrovertz. They did definitely add to the glam factor of the fest.
Inci Core: The booking of DJ Anoop at the eleventh hour
was a result of the time spent reading the lengthy MoU of a
certain sponsor.
As we moved on to the month of February, panic was setting in
and the Incident we had pictured looked like a far-fetched dream.
But there was a phoenix who rose from the ashes and lifted all our
spirits: Mr. GenSec (Shubham Agarwal) turned out to be the magic
wand the Inci team needed. Airtel was swiftly roped in as the CoSponsor of the fest, MRPL was the Inauguration Sponsor, a couple
of other firms pitching in a lakh each made the whole scene appear
really rosy for some time. Everyone was just amazed at how all his
contacts seemed to click perfectly. This gave us a chance to stretch
our horizon and revamp the schedule according to the retro theme.
Inci Core: We love you Shubham, for every penny!