A practical guide to exhibiting in Hyderabad
A calendar with four different audiences
Hyderabad does not have one exhibition identity, it has four. The life-sciences and pharmaceutical cluster around Genome Valley anchors BioAsia and a run of related conferences. Agriculture, poultry and food processing fill a large part of the HITEX calendar. Aviation brings a periodic, highly specialised audience. And Numaish at Nampally is something almost unique in India — a consumer exhibition that runs for weeks rather than days.
Those four ask for genuinely different stands. A pharma stand is a meeting environment. An agri stand is usually a demonstration and equipment problem, often on open ground. An aviation stand is a technical credibility exercise. A Numaish stand is a durable retail structure. The most useful thing an exhibitor can tell us at briefing is which of these worlds they are in, because the design logic diverges immediately after that.
Designing a life-sciences stand around conversations
At BioAsia and comparable events, the visitor has usually come with a defined purpose and a limited window. Business is done sitting down. The design question is therefore not what the stand looks like from the aisle but how many parallel conversations it can host, how private each of them needs to be, and whether someone waiting has somewhere reasonable to wait.
In practice that means a higher proportion of the plot given to seating than most exhibitors initially want, at least one semi-private area on anything from 24 m² upward, and an enclosed meeting room from around 48 m². It also means restraint in the visual treatment. This audience reads a calm, well-detailed, well-lit stand as evidence of a company that does things properly, and an over-designed one as marketing spend that has to be recovered somewhere.
HITEX and HICC are two different jobs
HITEX Exhibition Centre at Madhapur is a conventional exhibition ground — halls with workable height, drive-in access for exhibits, an adjoining open ground, and a rule set written for stand building. Most of what a stand builder normally does can be done there, and the design has genuine freedom on height and structure within the organiser's published limits.
The Hyderabad International Convention Centre is a finished convention interior. The floor, walls and ceilings are protected, and cutting, spraying, adhesive work and structural fixing are restricted or prohibited. A build for HICC has to arrive substantially complete, using dry-fit connections and factory-finished surfaces, and it is measured against the venue's own finish standard rather than against neighbouring stands. Exhibitors briefing for one and being allocated the other is a common and expensive surprise.
Open ground, demonstrations and agricultural shows
A significant part of the HITEX calendar uses open ground, particularly for agriculture, equipment and livestock-related fairs. An open-ground plot is a temporary building rather than a stand: raised flooring with sealed joints, a weather envelope, drainage that moves water away from the plot, wind bracing on tall elements, and independent power because ground supply is not hall supply.
Demonstration adds a further layer. Running equipment needs its own supply, a safe viewing distance, and often a surface that will survive being driven or walked on repeatedly. We quote flooring, envelope and power as separate visible items on these builds rather than folding them into a square-metre rate, because they are a substantial share of the cost and an exhibitor comparing quotes deserves to see where the money goes.
Building for a long-run exhibition
Numaish is the outlier on the Indian exhibition calendar — a consumer exhibition at Nampally that runs across weeks rather than days, with very high cumulative footfall. A structure built to the standard of a four-day trade fair will look tired long before it closes, and the failures are predictable: worn edges, marked surfaces, failed lamps, loose graphics and a floor that has taken far more traffic than it was specified for.
So the specification changes. Heavier edge protection on every exposed corner, surfaces chosen for cleanability rather than only appearance, replaceable graphic panels, accessible lamp positions, and an agreed plan for who maintains the stand during the run. It is a less glamorous conversation than the design one, but it is the difference between a stand that sells for the whole run and one that sells for the first week.
Transit, crew and self-sufficiency
The stand is designed and fabricated in our Mumbai workshop and moved to Hyderabad by road. That transit is a named stage in the schedule with its own buffer, not an assumption. Everything is designed to break down into sections that survive handling, with duplicated critical fixings and a spares kit sized for a venue where we cannot simply send someone to a familiar supplier.
Our own project manager and site supervisor travel with the project. On builds where local support is needed for scale we use vetted partners under our own supervision rather than handing the job over, because the continuity between what was built in the workshop and what stands on the floor is where finish quality actually survives. That is also why we photograph every custom build pre-assembled before it leaves.
Choosing a format for these venues
HITEX halls suit conventional formats well. A row stand under 18 m² will struggle to hold both display and a real conversation, so on the meeting-led shows we generally suggest going to 24 m² rather than adding height to a smaller plot. A corner adds a second approach and is usually worth more than extra depth. From around 60 m² an island works, and on the life-sciences shows an island's value is mostly in the enclosed rooms it makes possible.
At HICC the format is constrained by the venue's own layout and by what can be built inside it, so the design effort goes into finish and lighting rather than structure. On open ground the format question is almost entirely practical — how much covered area, how much demonstration area, and where the services enter — and the visual design follows those decisions rather than leading them.
Costs and what a Hyderabad quote covers
Pricing is our national spine: from ₹1.8 lakh at 9–18 m², from ₹4.5 lakh at 24–48 m² and from ₹12 lakh at 50–100 m²+, covering design, fabrication, graphics, lighting, transport from Mumbai, installation and dismantle. Floor space rental, GST, venue service charges, catering and stand staff are separate. Open-ground builds carry flooring, weather envelope and power as additional named items.
Long-run exhibitions are quoted differently again, because durability specification and maintenance across the run are real costs that a four-day figure does not contain. Where a build lands inside the standard brackets is decided mostly by how much enclosed meeting space it carries — enclosed rooms cost considerably more per square metre than open display area, which is worth knowing before comparing two quotes that look superficially similar.
