Owing to the extremely difficult situation in the industry – in the wake of COVID-19 pandemic – the Systems Integration India Awards (SIIA) event for this year has been cancelled, the event’s organizers announced today.
SIIA – Indian AV’s one and only prideful awards event – is jointly organized by Spinworkz Pte Ltd, and Shyamindira Media Networks Pvt Ltd on the evening of InfoComm India day one at the Bombay Exhibition Grounds in Mumbai every year.
While it was scheduled to be held on 2 September this year, the unprecedented scale of disruption in industry activity following the outbreak of COVID-19, and continued ambiguity on the possibilities of regrouping rendered it extremely untenable to organize the event.
“We believe we have been sensible on the decision,” said Thomas Prakasam, Managing Director, Spinworkz Pte Ltd. “We sensed the industry situation, and we spoke to our Founding Partners, besides friends and advisors,” he explained. “There has been an across-the-spectrum consensus on the thought process.”
The industry at this juncture cannot think of anything but focus on regrouping, and putting its energies to get back on the rails; completing the stalled projects; rebuilding the revenue streams, and breathe healthy enough to brace the future.
“Sensible decision,” commended Bharath Kumar, Managing Director, Kramer India, one of the Founding Partners to SIIA. “The pandemic left everyone crippling; it’s not easy to recover quickly,” he said. It needs some breathing time to stand again aloft.”
“We appreciate the sensibility about SIIA,” said Naveen Sridhar, beyerdynamic’s Director-Sales & Marketing (SAARC). “Hopefully, we all come out healthy and rebuild our businesses soon.”
Rishubh Nayer, Director, Christie India, felt: “Post-lockdown, the industry will go into reinventing itself, and that will take time; a breathing space is necessary.”
According to Harish A K, Business Head (Visual Products)-Epson India, COVID-19 has badly affected every single player in AV, besides other industries, and eroded bottom lines of many businesses. Pushing the SIIA event to next year would help the industry come back strong with better projects for better honours.
“Though the awards would undoubtedly have been a welcome reprieve, we didn’t want to distract the industry from its main focus; we wanted to stand in unity with the industry as a good number of the industry makers stand badly affected,” said Thomas. “We instead want to spend our resources to contribute to its faster recovery by helping them connect with increased numbers of end-users through our platforms.”
INDIA EXCLUSIVE e-NEWSLETTER
As part of this special initiative, Spinworkz Partner in India Shyamindira will be soon launching India-specific e-newsletter to reach out to wider industry channels and end-user communities. The new India-specific e-newsletter would go on wire from June 2020, with a good mix of industry interesting subjects and developments that would seek to contribute to strengthening industry connects and competencies.
“We are probably ordained for an instrument like this, to better connect the industry,” Ram Bhavanashi, Director of Shyamindira Media observed. “We had long been ideating on ways and means to create stronger, closer and better expressive connects for the industry, its inherent strengths, opportunities and implementing channels,” he said. “It’s time we did it. We hope to rise to the occasion, and create tools that help industry dynamics.”
