India’s most elaborate theme park opened this week with special-effects Hindu gods and Bollywood-themed rides, aiming to tap a thirst for family entertainment among the country’s rising middle-class.
Adlabs Imagica, which cost about US$294 million to create, opened its doors to the public on Thursday between the western cities of Mumbai and Pune, with capacity for 10,000 to 15,000 visitors a day.
In the style of a Disney or Universal Studios park, the new tourist site hopes to fill a gap in the Indian leisure market and comes with twists to appeal to the domestic audience.
Photo: Bloomberg
Attractions include a “Wrath of the Gods” show, in which Hindu deities furious with humans “cause the ultimate destruction” amid temple ruins.
The “Curse of Salimgarh” involves a haunted fortress named after an old Delhi structure, while a “Mr India” motion-simulation ride is based on a 1987 Hindi superhero film of the same name.
“It was our vision to create an entertainment theme park of international standards in India,” said Manmohan Shetty, whose firm Adlabs Entertainment Ltd set up the complex.
A water park, hotel and shopping area will also be launched at the 121-hectare site in phases, while Shetty plans to open another venture in the southern Indian city of Hyderabad in 2015.
Tickets are expensive by Indian standards — at 1,200 rupees (US$22) for children and 1,500 rupees for adults on weekends — but Shetty is confident of meeting a target of 3 million visitors a year.
A day out for a family of four could cost about 10,000 rupees — “not a huge expense once or twice a year,” said the Bollywood entrepreneur, who also introduced multiplex cinemas to India.
The park will attract urban middle-class families who are spending in ways unimaginable a decade ago, but who still have limited leisure options, said Ankur Bisen, vice president at consultancy Technopak Advisors.
Since India’s economy was liberalized in the early 1990s, household spending has risen on new areas such as eating out and travel, spurred by increased exposure to global trends, Bisen said.
“It’s affordability meets desirability,” the retail and consumer products analyst said. “People are starting to see what they’re missing in their lives.”
The new park fits the trend across Asia, which has become a new frontier for large-scale outdoor entertainment complexes in recent years thanks to growing affluence and cheaper air travel.
Disney is constructing a US$5 billion theme park resort in Shanghai, while Asia’s first Legoland opened to packed crowds in Malaysia late last year.
Such attractions on the continent draw more than 100 million visitors and up to US$3 billion in revenues a year, said Chris Yoshii, Hong Kong-based director in Asian leisure and cultural services at consultancy AECOM.
“It’s really been in the last 10 years there’s been very strong growth of 5 to 10 percent per year,” he said.
However, India is yet to attract major global theme park operators to its shores, in part because of concerns over infrastructure and spending power.
On a recent visit to Mumbai, Walt Disney International boss Andy Bird was reported as saying the firm had no plans to open a park in the country, instead focusing on its Shanghai resort.
Adlabs imported all of its new rides owing to India’s lack of technology and it took on staff with experience at international theme parks — but it could be some time before the big names arrive themselves.
“We’re at the point where the market is not big enough for Disney to come in, but it’s big enough for an Indian businessman to come and seize the opportunity,” Bisen said.
Stephen Garrett, a 27-year-old graduate student, always thought he would study in China, but first the country’s restrictive COVID-19 policies made it nearly impossible and now he has other concerns. The cost is one deterrent, but Garrett is more worried about restrictions on academic freedom and the personal risk of being stranded in China. He is not alone. Only about 700 American students are studying at Chinese universities, down from a peak of nearly 25,000 a decade ago, while there are nearly 300,000 Chinese students at US schools. Some young Americans are discouraged from investing their time in China by what they see
MAJOR DROP: CEO Tim Cook, who is visiting Hanoi, pledged the firm was committed to Vietnam after its smartphone shipments declined 9.6% annually in the first quarter Apple Inc yesterday said it would increase spending on suppliers in Vietnam, a key production hub, as CEO Tim Cook arrived in the country for a two-day visit. The iPhone maker announced the news in a statement on its Web site, but gave no details of how much it would spend or where the money would go. Cook is expected to meet programmers, content creators and students during his visit, online newspaper VnExpress reported. The visit comes as US President Joe Biden’s administration seeks to ramp up Vietnam’s role in the global tech supply chain to reduce the US’ dependence on China. Images on
Taiwan Transport and Storage Corp (TTS, 台灣通運倉儲) yesterday unveiled its first electric tractor unit — manufactured by Volvo Trucks — in a ceremony in Taipei, and said the unit would soon be used to transport cement produced by Taiwan Cement Corp (TCC, 台灣水泥). Both TTS and TCC belong to TCC International Holdings Ltd (台泥國際集團). With the electric tractor unit, the Taipei-based cement firm would become the first in Taiwan to use electric vehicles to transport construction materials. TTS chairman Koo Kung-yi (辜公怡), Volvo Trucks vice president of sales and marketing Johan Selven, TCC president Roman Cheng (程耀輝) and Taikoo Motors Group
New apartments in Taiwan’s major cities are getting smaller, while old apartments are increasingly occupied by older people, many of whom live alone, government data showed. The phenomenon has to do with sharpening unaffordable property prices and an aging population, property brokers said. Apartments with one bedroom that are two years old or older have gained a noticeable presence in the nation’s six special municipalities as well as Hsinchu county and city in the past five years, Evertrust Rehouse Co (永慶房產集團) found, citing data from the government’s real-price transaction platform. In Taipei, apartments with one bedroom accounted for 19 percent of deals last