The Chemtech Pharma and Biotech Exhibition at the NSE Grounds in Goregaon, Mumbai did not favor the pharma exhibitors as the visitors were not as targeted as it was projected by the organizers. Secondly, the exhibition centre, which was far from the conference venue, also blocked easy accessibility to the expo for the business delegates at the conference.

Long stretch of five days, the positioning of the Chemtech conference and exhibition at two different locations, the non-specific nature of the Chemtech exhibition, lower presence of pharma factories in Mumbai, were cited as main factors for the low turnout of potential visitors at the exhibition. The Chemtech exhibitors had benchmarked the response at the exhibition on the basis of the visitor turnout at the recently held Indian Pharmaceutical Congress {IPC} exhibition in Pune and it was found out that compared to IPC, the number of visitors to pharma and biotech stalls at Chemtech exhibition was relatively poor.

"The not so expected IPC exhibition generated a better response compared to the much expected Chemtech. Compared to 700 potential visitors to our stall at IPC, only 150 visitors attended us at Chemtech," said Shekar Shirwalkar of Emerson Process Management, one of the participants at the exhibition. "The turnout has been less than 50 per cent compared to IPC," echoed Manish Agarwal of Cadmach Machinery Co. Pvt. Ltd. "In IPC, out of every 100 visitors, every 25 visitors were quality visitors. However, here we garnered only about five daily visitors, out of which only one is expected to be a quality visitor," said Suresh Pareek, managing director, Ideal Cures Pvt. Ltd.

Non-specific nature of the exhibition was cited as a key reason for such a low turnaround. "The IPC exhibition was exclusively meant for the pharma industry. Chemtech, being predominantly a chemical exhibition, the visitors mostly were from the chemical industry," said Pareek. Moreover, if both exhibition and conference would have had held at the same location, 95 per cent of the conference attendees would have surely visited the exhibition, he said. Also, the exhibitors found it worthy to hold machinery exhibitions in locations like Pune, Hyderabad and Bangalore compared to Mumbai.

"In IPC, every pharma company had deputed at least two executives as delegates, which was not to be seen here," said Sunil Mistry, chief executive at |Ambica Machine Tools.

A repetition of the products exhibited at the IPC conference was cited as another reason for a low turnout.The exhibitors were particularly unhappy with the five-day stretch of the conference. "If there are not enough visitors it is futile to hold a five day event. A three day event will be best suited," said Karnik K. Parikh, Director, Pall Corporation.

However, one in every eight-pharma exhibitors interviewed had few nice things to say about the exhibition. "We found the Chemtech exhibition on par with the IPC exhibition. We expect more than 50 per cent of the 700 odd visitors to our stall to be potential," said Dhairya Ashar of Amkette Analytics Pvt Ltd.