No more freebies! Pay more for garba tickets this Navratri

As garba revellers in city get ready to dance to the tunes of sanedo sanedo and odhni odhu to udi udi jaye, they have to brace up themselves to cough up more for passes this year. 

The eight-day long Navratri celebrations, starting next week will see organisers not only cutting down number of complementary passes but also increase ticket price.

The organisers have been forced to resort to such remedial measures as they are facing tough time in getting sponsorship for this year’s event as the telecom companies, which used to be the main sponsors previously have backed out this year.

The telecommunication companies used to spend huge budget behind the sponsorship of garba events in an effort to woo masses. The garba organisers used to get the title sponsorship from the mobile companies. Gujarat has 11 telecom operators and almost every garba night organiser, this year rues the fact that not a single telecom operator has sponsored any event in Ahmedabad.

“The garba organisers are facing problem in getting sponsorship and also the number of organisers have increased drastically. So, many of the organisers will not be able to recover even the cost of the event,” said Kush Banker, a garba organiser.  The telecom companies feel that garba events have no more potential for augmentation of their revenue and they need no more branding in urban market which has reached saturation level.

“We have decided to sponsor college events, which is our target groups. It is better to focus on target groups instead of masses (like garba nights),” said an official of a telecom operator which has launched its services last year.

Airtel, which last year sponsored garba nights, has decided to organise it only for its employees and their families. In case of Vodafone, Idea, Tata or even Videocon, none of them have shown aggression in sponsoring garba.