Interview with Mirza L Baig, Founder Director of Hammerhead Experiences

Paradigm shift in the event spaces… Is the second installment of the team.i live Instagram series. This is a series where experts from all across the events industry feature in a live conversation with our CEO, Mr. Arvind Jyot Sabhaney. The whole objective of this series is to address and answer the questions and concerns of young people regarding the fate and future of the Events industry due to the pandemic. The experts invited on our show will address these set of questions while they also talk about their journey in the event spaces.

So on the 23rd of June 2020, on a lovely Tuesday evening of 6pm, Mr.Mirza L Baig, Founder Director of Hammerhead Experiences, joins our CEO Mr. Arvind Jyot Sabhaney as he talks about his journey from a chef to an events stalwart, about his different and positive outlook about the lockdown, future of events and much more.

Tell us about yourself:

According to Mr. Mirza, his journey of his career in events has been nothing short of a great “Roller coaster” ride. Hailing from Bangalore, he completed his bachelors from Christ university with a degree in hotel Management. Post graduation, he went on to do double masters degree one in international marketing and the other in Business administration. But his first love was hotel management “Hotelier is what I wanted to pursue”.

Thus his first job was at Taj, as he worked there as a chef since cooking was his passion too. “That was my first introduction to corporate life”.

But events and organising events was something that he still had in the back of his mind. This was because back in his college days, he was part of the college’s organizing committee.

After working for 7 years with Taj, he decided to get into events. “I wanted to start off an events firm with like minded people I had no prior experience in this!”. This is when he met Mike and Mac, who he regards as the two pillars of the events industry. In collaboration with them, he started his company in the late 90s.

Their company started to do well, and on the parallel their company started to grow among liquor brands in Bangalore. They hosted the famous “Bacardi Blast Events” back in the day, and thus slowly they became experts in liquor trade.

After working for quite some time, he decided to call it quits from the board of his company. He moved out of the board solely because he wanted to do bigger things, such as brand advocates for brands in terms of social media and content creation.

“You may leave event management, but event management won’t leave you. “

 Lockdown effect:

 “I am quite a positive person, I haven’t complained about the effect of Covid yet!”.

For Mr. Mirza, this lockdown period was more like a detox for him. His first priority was to keep his mental strength in check during such tough times. So in the first 21 days, he was relaxing or as he calls it “chilling”.

He spent a lot of time at home, which usually otherwise doesn’t happen due to his hectic work schedule. He then started to find his different passion points. Thus, he started cooking extensively during this lockdown period.

“I will master the art of cooking Biryani so that if my company doesn’t function well from here on, then I can sell biryani”.

The other thing that this lockdown helped Mr. Mirza is to identify and find out the different revenue channels other than event management.

“Covid has made me an innovator and more positive”.

On being asked about his estimation of things coming back to normal, he states “We have to prepare ourselves for the next 12-18 months”.

A word of Advice for students who aspire a career in the Events Industry?

“We are 8,000 and half crore industry, and we are not going anywhere. We are growing 25% year-on-year. Thus multiple covids can’t break us. You gotta be an innovator, stay positive and find different and various revenue channels. Event Management requires you to sacrifice a lot of personal time, and if you are ready to sacrifice all of that because your passion lies there, then event management is your cup of tea.”

To watch the full interview, head over to our instagram page