Live and loud: How a mature entertainment market is putting India on the map

• Features

• 15/06/2026

Wherever you are in the world, audiences are demanding in- person experiences that are truly unparalleled. The Indian market is no exception, and with good reason – the live events market is booming, both in fixed installation and rental markets.

Like live events sectors around the world, India’s market was hit especially hard during the pandemic. With stadiums shut and revenue pipelines vanishing overnight, the industry ground to a halt. Despite this, the Indian live events market resurged with a vengeance, driven by a growing demand from audiences, accelerated infrastructure investment, digitisation of enterprise environments, and India’s positioning as a global touring destination.

This growing demand and leap in budgets have granted industry professionals the freedom to deliver designs in ways that create tangible results without constraint.

Shaurya Gupta, business head – audio & integration, Hi-Tech Audio & Image, explains: “The pause created hunger. Audiences wanted experiences, artists wanted new markets, investors wanted infrastructure resilience, and technology had to catch up

to all three. Today, we are free to design the way that we want to design. Previously, we had to worry about budgets rather than focussing on the design. People are seeing India grow, and the artists are coming in. The Weeknd is coming to India as part of a huge tour, Kanye West is coming in, and I think it’s a very good time for the Indian live events industry.”

There is opportunity here for AV professionals that are willing to seize it, as Shaurya explains: “We started 12 years ago when we got into Digico, RCF, L-Acoustics, Luminex, and MA Lighting. Back then, the installation market was not as big for the premium segment in the mid-2010s. There were not as many artists coming in, and not much of a requirement [to invest in complex systems].”

Hi-Tech Audio & Image is no stranger to the live events market both in rental and live installation. Founded by Rajan Gupta, the company boasts a strong 35-year history with a plethora of outstanding auditorium projects under its belt as well as a strong presence in the live events world. Working alongside managing partner Nirdosh Aggarwal and a team of more than 70 engineers and specialists, Hi-Tech has played a central role in major projects across India. The company served as AV distributor for 12 of the 13 stadiums used during the Commonwealth Games in 2010 and later supplied audio products for high-profile shows such as rapper Yo Yo Honey Singh’s Millionaire India tour, which travelled across ten major cities in 2025.

India as a beacon

India has become a popular destination for touring artists from around the world. Huge crowds, larger venues, and increasingly sophisticated sound and lighting combine to create an electric live events atmosphere. Massive international and homegrown productions began raising the bar across the country, with Travis Scott’s concert at Delhi’s biggest stadium, Maroon 5, legendary bands like Green Day and Linkin Park performing at Lollapalooza, and Bollywood powerhouse Sonu Nigam’s ongoing multi-city tour leading the charge. Not to mention the roaring success of artists, including AP Dhillon’s One-on-One Tour, and Diljit Dosanjh’s Dil-Luminati Tour.

For Shaurya, this latest wave of growth began with Coldplay’s Music of the Spheres tour in 2025. The band played two sold-out shows at Narendra Modi Stadium in Ahmedabad and three more at DY Patil Stadium in Mumbai, performing to a combined audience of 223,000 fans.

“This was the ‘canon event’ for the live industry,” explains Shaurya. “These outstanding shows lit the beacon for a wave of international artists to choose India as a leading live events destination and live events professionals are now getting recognition for the work that they do. It’s recognised as a real job now, there are so many audio academies in major parts of the cities, so it is understood that people do this for a living. Today, it is widely known that there is a science behind what we do and that there is a lot of blood, sweat, and tears that go in to putting on a show. Shows like this gives us the recognition, even the prime minister recognises this as a growing industry.”

This boom in both demand from audiences and supply from international and high profile regional artists has also led to a jump in the complexity of shows. As a result, a higher demand for premium audiovisual equipment to support these artists is needed, much in the same way that they are used to performing anywhere else in the world. This drive, Shaurya says, has redefined expectations and delivered new revenue streams.

Shaurya says: “With international acts touring through India, production teams want a defined signal hierarchy: AVB as the primary transport, AES as a digital fallback, and analogue as the final failsafe. Even our rental partners are coming to us and asking for Luminex switches, for DMI-AVB cards, and we’re also promoting Sound Devices in a big manner. We’re happy to see people coming in and realising the need for this kind of technology. In the beginning, everything ran on analogue as there was no demand and therefore no supply. With everything moving to western standards [of live events] everything is growing.”

With the live events boom in full swing, Shaurya believes that this is only just the beginning. A wave of high profile tours and major sporting events has put India on the map, opening up even larger venues with more sophisticated technologies and more complex demands from artists to create a truly special live event experience for the Indian market. Today, international crews now collaborate seamlessly with leading Indian rental companies, trusting them to deliver at par with any major production hub in the world. For Hi-Tech Audio & Image, being part of that evolution by supporting, enabling, and growing alongside these partners has been one of the most defining parts of the company’s journey.

Shaurya closes: “The live event market is going to get bigger and better from here,” says Shaurya. “We have the WAVE Summit which is exclusively for the live audio industry and there are bigger tours coming in, as well as national stadiums which are opening to host concert shows. Travis Scott performed at the biggest stadium in Delhi, and Coldplay performed at the biggest cricket stadium in the world, so it’s only going to get better with more tours taking place. The Olympics and FIFA are also getting big in India, and the country has become an important spot on the map. It used to only be Singapore and other countries in the region which attracted this attention, but now India is front and centre.

“We need to understand that this industry and this boom did not just happen overnight. It has taken 30-40 years to get us here. My dad, Rajan, started this company in 1990, and we must appreciate and look back at where we came from. It used to be speaker people and DJs responsible for driving this market, but now we are supporting such humungous projects with great artists, this industry is now being appreciated on a global platform. India is the place to be right now. Globally, everybody has seen and heard everything, but in India there is still a huge hunger for these events. For many people it’s a childhood dream to attend events with multiple stages, big-name artists, and an amazing level of production. Everybody wants to learn and grow, and we are getting the recognition for this at last.”

Rajan Gupta, founder, Hi-Tech Audio & Image, closes: “Technology alone is not enough. What matters is how it is understood, applied, and supported over time. The Indian market didn’t need shortcuts; it needed commitment. We’ve spent three decades bridging global innovation with local execution. Now it’s time to empower the next wave.”