PDM India’s Prashant Powar moves to Lowe Scanad, Tanzania

Prashant Powar, associate vice-president, entertainment, PDM India (formerly Percept D’Mark), has quit the organisation and moved out of India. He has joined Lowe Scanad, Tanzania (Africa), as event director. Although Powar has been involved with various events internationally, this is his first career stint abroad. Lowe Scanad is a part of the Lowe Worldwide group and has clients such as Vodacom, Coca-Cola, Toyota, Emirates, Millicom and PSI.

At Lowe Scanad, Powar will initiate an events division called Draft Worldwide. His mandate will be to create an independent profit centre to set high standards for event execution in Tanzania.

Commenting on the reason for his move, Powar says, “In India, I was part of an already established events division; at Lowe Scanad, the challenge will be to establish the division. Further, this move allows me to take the initiative to enhance the events industry in East Africa as a whole.”

According to Powar, the events market in Tanzania has great potential, but it has a long road to tread before it fulfils that potential. Due to the lack of state of art facilities in that country, establishing an events industry will be that much more challenging. The budgets tend to be on the higher side because most of the equipment has to be outsourced from South Africa or the UK. “Local vendors have the basic equipment, but not high tech equipment like we have in India or some of the other countries,” says Powar.

He reveals that there is no concept of super stars in Tanzania, the way there is in India. “Endorsements are very unpopular in that country,” he says candidly. “The challenge is enormous.”

Powar started his career in 1997 with ad agency Creative Communications, where he spent two years managing the Max Touch brand (now Hutch) on events such as the annual Prithvi Theatre Festival and ‘The Legend of Ram’ (an Amir Raza Husein production). While there, he was also a part of the team that managed the Boney M concert in Bangalore and Pune.

In 1999, Powar joined event management company Wizcraft International Entertainment. He spent six years there and was among those responsible for a below-the-line campaign for Venky’s, titled ‘Be a Venky’s Family’, as well as other work such as the CIM campaign, ‘ONGC: Celebrating 30 Years of Mumbai High’, Microsoft summits and conferences, Bill Gates’ visit to India, the launch of the Idea Cellular Service in various circles and Raymond’s annual fashion show.

After spending time in the corporate events field, Powar moved into the business of televised events (special events). He was involved in Asha Bhosle’s first stage show in Mumbai (‘Kal, Aaj Aur Hamesha’), which was shot entirely for television and telecast on Sony. Other events he has handled include the National Games 2002 in Hyderabad, the Afro Asian Games 2003 and the Commonwealth Bid 2010 (where he was a part of the Indian delegation to Jamaica).

Powar joined PDM India in 2004.

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