ARK Grupo: Pumping Life into Events While Inculcating Youth Factor Date:   Sunday , November 23, 2014 \"Not knowing enough about the \'correct way to do things\' and doing them anyway can open up the most amazing new doorways\" - Richard Branson. This precisely summarizes the story of the three founders of ARK Grupo - a multi-disciplinary establishment that offers an entire portfolio of effective, affordable and customized event solutions according to client needs. When the three school friends - Anoop Mathew,Rahul Papali andKiran Raj - were in college, a common dream of becoming their own masters took root deep into their minds and started flourishing without anyone\'s knowledge. After the college days were over, they chose the treaded path and started working in the IT industry with the flame of the long seen dream still burning inside. But the free-spirited trio was not meant to remain caged up. Soon, they broke free by deciding to abandon the cocoon of their jobs and soared out to rule the world. Their first maiden venture was kicked off in the Bangalore F&B sector with an upscale pub named \'White Tiger Sports Lounge Pub\' in May 2009. In later years they partnered with Xtreme Sports Bar to manage its day-to-day operations. The success of lounge pub, which was first of its kind in the area, inspired multiple other competitors to mushroom up. With a strong level of self-confidence from this success and an eye for expansion, ARK decided to set foot in the event management business. But the journey set ahead of the elemental three whose names\' initials coalesce to constitute the name of the company - \'ARK\', was not an easy one. Ignoring the raised eyebrows and skeptical remarks, the company set sail to meet the compelling demands of the market for professional event managers. While the industry looked bounty, the challenges were tough nuts to crack. As the event industry encompasses relatively few players, gaining experience and know-how of executing events was not easily available. ARK relied on trial and error to gain a footing. \"Regulatory aspects for licenses and permissions needed considerable amount of research and relationship building to get to where we are today which was critical to our success over these initial years,\" explains Anoop Mathew, Co-Founder & CEO, ARK Grupo. As opposed to being a services based events company, the trio decided to create inspired events as products and sell them to the masses. \"This involved taking a lot of risk on our end to understand the market and deliver entertainment that our audience needs and the appropriate support from our family, friends and investing partners enabled us to confidently raise the bar for entertainment events,\" says Rahul Papali, Director, ARK Grupo. Post nailing the glitches that came its way along with the industry challenge of infrastructure, ARK took the route to cater the youth on the top of the pyramid of the event management industry\' live performances. The company has successfully executed multiple concerts to the tune of over 20,000 people, a scale that Bangalore has not witnessed very often in the past. Having organized a wide spectrum of events ranging from cricket tournaments to music concerts for a host of sectors in India as well as Malaysia, the company further diversified to address the capital management sector as well. With core values such asintegrity, innovation, passion, accountability and teamwork combined with groundbreaking ideas, the company created a strong foothold and is most popular in the EDM (Electronic Dance Music) events domain. Coming in a full circle, ARK is gearing up to cater the corporate events domain with an avant-garde idea of ARKLYMPICS - a multi-sport inter-corporate festival. \'Work is Worship\' - with this ethos in mind, ARK doesnot leave any stone unturned including travelling to client locations in order to take its creativity and skills to all the corners of the country and serve only the best of its services. Incubating a free working space, the company envisions expanding laterally such as in multiple languages and zones while exploring opportunities globally as the likes of the Middle East and other Southeast Asian countries. ARK also contemplates a demographic expansion along with getting an IP under their name.The company further plans to grow its corporate portfolio to execute events on any scale including organizing business and motivational speaking events. ARK is also building on its network of event partners across India to ramp up its efforts and enable them to better execute nationwide entertainment events. Panel: Offices: Bangalore Headcount: 15 Verticals: F&B, Equities and Real estate Services: Event Management (Corporate & Live performances), F&B Management and Capital Management Clients: (Corporate) TVS, Deloitte, Tesco Key Management: Anoop Mathew, Co-Founder & CEO With an engineering background, Anoop began his career as a programmer at IDS Softwares and went on to join Merit Tracas an IT consultant. Post that, he worked with Baba Jobs as Director of Employer Relations. Accomplishments: 2009: White Tiger Sports Lounge Pub 2010/2011: Ventured into corporate events like annual day, cricket & sports tournaments with multiple companies 2012: David Guetta: 12,000 attendees Above and Beyond (Trance Around the World 450): 4,000 attendees 2013: Swedish House Mafia: 21,000 attendees Tiesto: 11,000 attendees Hardwell: 15,000 attendees Avicii: 16,000 attendees 2014: Armin Van Buuren: 8,000 attendees Deadmau5: 12,000 attendees CEO Speak: When we first formed ARK, we envisioned the opportunity to run a business and to be our own bosses. Many young men dream of the chance to run their own pub and we made that a reality. Understanding the key details involved in running a highly competitive and dynamic business was a huge learning for us; and that eventually lead us into the big market of events where we have managed to create a strong presence. Having learnt a lot of the key fundamentals involved in running events, we aim to widen our scope and strategically build on our operational strengths to grow into newer demographics and change the entertainment and events space in the country.