By Sandeep Lodha
Budget 2021 expectations: Across India, weddings are a important milestone, deeply rooted in traditions and culture even today. Right from the venue to the décor, the ensemble to the meals, couples and their households spend immense focus and invest in just about every minute detail to make this auspicious day memorable. To place factors in viewpoint, in the pre-covid planet, an typical wedding in the nation would span 2-3 days, with many events, hundreds of guests in attendance, and elaborate arrangements, averaging a expense of 2.5-3 lacs. However, in 2020, the COVID-19 pandemic transformed the ‘big fat Indian wedding’ into a ‘small & intimate affair’, with typical guest lists comprising merely 60-one hundred guests owing to social distancing norms, in line with the government protocols across unique states.
Budget 2021 expectations from the wedding business
Since occasions immemorial, when a wedding was scheduled to take spot, the whole village would come collectively, lend a assisting hand and guarantee all preparations had been absolutely nothing quick of excellent. However, with altering occasions, the emergence of nuclear households, migration to urban cities, and profession-oriented millennials, the wedding business has a new untapped customer base to cater – modern day Indian couples.
Today’s millennial couples take the onus of organising, arranging and budgeting for their personal wedding, as opposed to households being the important selection makers previously. While these couples are immensely involved in the arranging procedure, these modern couples are quick on time, choose one-cease-shop options, rely heavily on technologies, and digital offerings. In my viewpoint, when the customer has changed more than the years, the wedding business has been resistant to evolving, consequently, it nevertheless remains a largely unorganised sector.
Wedding business Budget 2021 expectations
As we know it, in India, this sector is defined by its extremely competitive nature and involvement of quite a few ancillary participants such as photographers, decorators, makeup artists, caterers, amongst other individuals. As per a report published by KPMG, India’s present wedding marketplace is estimated at $50 billion, accompanied by a speedy annual development price. Thereby, generating it one of the largest contributors to the travel and hospitality industries. However, as described, it continues to be largely dependent on informal contracts and inconspicuous verbal agreements. This acts as a terrific barrier to the formalisation and development of the sector. It is also extremely unreliable for quite a few couples who face quite a few inconveniences, mostly due to the absence of a written/legally binding contract amongst vendors and customers.
For instance, in some cases, vendors fail to provide on their verbal promises, such as final-minute cancellations, providing low-high quality solutions and services, as effectively as quite a few inconsistencies in payment terms, leaving customers with tiny to no alternative to rely on their vendors, solely based on mutual trust. At occasions, vendors have a tendency to quote exorbitantly higher prices and guarantee planet-class services, but fail to provide on high quality.
Budget 2021 expectations: Digital wedding services on the rise
On the vibrant side, more than the previous handful of years, quite a few organised wedding arranging aggregators, digital wedding services, and so on have mushroomed across India, thereby, driving transparency, normal procedures, implementing written contracts and high quality.
In the extended run, such startups and businesses will aid formalise the business and in turn, create more demand and steady income streams, when providing customers worth for revenue and assured terrific experiences. This will also give a terrific impetus to the government, who will advantage from the organisation of the sector.
As we step into 2021, the business is on its path to recovery from the effects of COVID-19. In this sense, the Union Budget 2021 can be genuinely reformative for the hospitality and wedding business. As a component of the ecosystem, and a tech-enabled wedding firm, we propose two key ideas for the recovery of the sector in 2021:
1. Expectations of monetary help by enabling GST relief for the sector: We urge the government to assistance the sector, especially, little and medium scale enterprises by providing a minimum reimbursement of 25% of the GST or as an option, permit an equivalent credit quantity. Such assistance by the government will help little and medium-sized hotels to run their operations and recover from the losses that occurred due to the COVID-19 lockdown.
Additionally, if the price range lowers the GST requirement from the present 18% to 5% in the extended run and 2% in the quick-term for banquets as effectively as other supporting services, it would come as a massive relief for each – enterprise owners as effectively as customers.
2. Organising the extremely unorganised wedding sector: Further, there is a pressing will need to formalize the sector. By establishing an orderly technique, the government will be levelling the field, providing competitors across the board a fair likelihood to place forward their services in a meaningful and more transparent manner, thereby benefiting customers.
For instance, RERA protects the interests of household purchasers and enhance investments in the actual estate sector, whereas, IRDA protects the interests of the policyholders, regulates, promotes and guarantees orderly development of the insurance coverage business. We urge the government to make such a framework for the Indian wedding business so that customers can be treated relatively as effectively as encourage formal investments in the sector.
Finally, encouraging and enabling technologies for little and nearby enterprises has the energy to accelerate digital transformation of the business. It will allow consumer comfort, improve demand on the digital front and guarantee that buyers have access to the most appropriate services in their option of location.
In addition to the above, relaxation of restrictions for hotels and banquets, guaranteeing single-window clearance for nearby entrepreneurs in the hospitality sector, tax rebates for customers to improve spending energy, and producing tourism circuits across essential tourist or wedding location places like Jaipur, Goa, Lucknow, and so on. will fastrack the recovery of the wedding business in India.
We have immense faith in the government and are confident that Budget 2021 will aid us turnaround the downturn brought about by COVID-19.
The columnist is CEO – OYO’s Weddingz.in. Views expressed are the author’s personal.