India International Trade Fair 2014

The India International Trade Fair is all set to amaze the visitors with its 34th edition in the capital. It’ll be inaugurated by the Honourable President of India Dr.Pranab Mukherjee on November 14th. Focussing on the theme of Women Entrepreneur, the fair would be open from 14th November to 27thNovember. The first five days are restricted to business visitors and rest of the days are open for the general public.

This year, South Africa has become the partner company who would get along 24 exhibitors from their country to display their arts and culture and make the audience familiar with their traditions. All these products are bespoke and especially made by the women, which in turn plays a significant role in understanding the importance of women in the economy of the country.

Thailand is the focus country and focus state is Delhi in this year’s exhibition. A certain portion of the exhibition is exclusively given to women entrepreneurs on discounted prices and Wifi facility has been made available in Hall no.9 for exhibitors and visitors and also media persons who want to file the story on the spot.

V.Kumar, General Manager of ITPO, addressing the media about the new developments in IITF 2014

This time the IITF 2014 would witness 25 countries participating in the exhibition, with many being first time exhibitors, like Germany, Bahrain, Nepal, Sri Lanka, Kyrgyzstan etc. The exhibition would also hold some seminars or workshops talking or focussing on the theme of Women Entrepreneur.

The India Trade Promotion Organisation (ITPO) has taken care of the basic issues such as parking which has been made available at various places and also because most of the visitors travel through metro a special metro gate would be kept openduring the trade fair for easy travel. As far as the entrance fee is concerned, elderly people would be given free entrance but others would have to purchase the tickets from the respective counters. If you do not wish to stand in long queues then you can also take the tickets from the metro station.

For entertainment purposes, ITPO has organised many cultural programmes at respective auditoriums on each day to keep the visitors engaged for each and every minute. Other than the cultural programmes, CSF and CRPF bands will also be performing and a rock band performance would also be organised to keep the youngsters engaged. The ITPO has gone tech this year by introducing an application which would have information about each exhibitor, products, dining nad navigation mapsto each stall etc. This application can be downloaded from IITF2014’s website.

Vikram Shehgal, DIG (ITPO), briefing media about the security facilities in IITF 2014

ITPO has launched the web-application, but it has not yet launched the availability of tickets on the net. Commenting on the same, Rita Menon the Chairperson of ITPO said, “When you hold events on such a global level, it becomes impossible to make such advancement happen. We cater to a huge audience in trade fair and e-ticketing is only easy for events like a book launch or so. So yes, that is the reason why we haven’t introduced e-ticketing system in our application.”

Further speaking on the theme, Ms. Menon says, “Well, this exhibition is surely going to be a huge buzz of the town and we are looking forward to it. One would witness beautiful art-work coming from South Africa and women of India would have the privilege to know about the job opportunities here.”

Media at the IITF press conference.

This year, ITPO has also kept under consideration the need of ATM’s, so they have brought in 12 banks together who have set-up ATMs at different places of the exhibition. Also, this time the exhibition would not be limited to people who visit it, as with the help of the official partners 92.7 Big Fm the listeners would have direct information about the eventsat the exhibition.

“We have made arrangements for health check-up centres in collaboration with Ministry of health and have also made availability of ambulances. The check-up is free of cost and the motive behind it is to spread across the information about communicable diseases, hyper tension, BP etc. We have kept a target of 70,000 people to be treated and informed in the entire IITF 2014,” says V.Kumar, General Manager of ITPO.

Rita Menon speaking on Women Entrepreneurship at IITF 2014

The visitors have been requested to carry as less baggage as possible and not to carry any susceptible articles such as knife, lighter or any liquids. The number of lines and counters for buying tickets has been increased and there would be special rows for elderly, differently abled people and women & children. Let’s see if IITF 2014 manages to make this year’s event more visitor-friendly and convenient.