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Journalism of Courage
Drastic dip in footfall leaves organisers a harried lot
‘Insight-2008,’ the ‘Consumer Marker Research Fest’ of the Indian Institute of Management –Ahmedabad, witnessed a drastically reduced footfall of 2,000 compared to last year’s 8,000. For the students who had organised the fest, it was an unexpected shock.
Partho Pratim Das, in-charge of Corporate Communications, who has been tracking the footfalls at the institute, said: “The number of people visiting the fest has dropped significantly even though we had made full attempts at wide-scale publicity. In fact, the publicity was good in all terms. It is around 1,800 to 2,000 this year; while last year the footfall was around 8,000.”
The organisers had a tough time roping in participant companies. Many companies backed out at the last moment, while many others wanted to play it safe. Nevertheless, the organisers were able to secure an almost equal number of projects as last year.
Organisers believe a major reason for such a low response by both participant companies and the public is the market downturn.
“Apart from the very obvious effect of the market downturn, this year the fest had been organised quite close to Diwali, which also seems to have affected the participation as in earlier years the fest was organised at least at a week’s gap from Diwali,” said Pratik Agarwal, event coordinator. “The fest was on Dhanteras day, but anyways, we definitely did not predict such a response,” said Partho.
