By Honorary Reporter Prachie Chamoli from India
Photos= Pink Box Events (PBE)

Pink Box Events (PBE) is a women-led company set up in 2015. Over the past five years, it has brought India and Korea closer together through working with 10 K-pop artists and organizing more than 20 K-pop concerts and fan meetings in 13 cities across India.

The following are excerpts from an interview with the company.

(Pink Box Events with KARD at New Delhi)

Please introduce yourselves.

Pink Box Events is the result of four family-like friends who started it to bring Hallyu closer to home. The company was started in January 2015 and it's been a great journey since. We take pride in being the oldest company in India to work with Korean artists.

The company's founders have been friends for a long time. How was life before starting PBE?

Two of us are actually siblings and the rest met years back. I think we all grew up listening to K-pop and watching K-dramas because we could relate a lot with our food and cultural habits. Also, the majority of people from northeast India have been exposed to this genre from an early age because of various factors. Before PBE, I think we had time to indulge in it as a fun activity but it's now our work and passion.

Tell us more about the company's early days.

For a few years, all of us were working in the Korean music industry, and we were associated with the Korean Cultural Center in India from 2013. But no individual group took that step forward to promote K-pop and bring Korean artists to the country, so we took a leap of faith and started PBEI in 2015. We were thinking of names and while pink wasn't our favorite color, we didn't hate it so we picked it. This journey was also something out of the box, as in nobody had tried it, hence we got the name Pink Box.

As the first company in India of your kind, what K-pop events and artists have you handled?

We've worked with almost all Korean artists that have come to India since 2014. NSONIC was the first K-pop group to hold a concert here, and we worked with them in January 2015. We have also worked with Dabit, Hayana, JJCC, Teentop, IMFACT, MONT, Jang Hanbyul and KARD. We were also the first to hold a concert jointly with the Nagaland state government in its acclaimed Hornbill Festival, and that remains by far the biggest K-pop concert in India with around 13,000 fans. In addition, we've held multiple shows and tours across India.

(Pink Box Events with MONT at the Hornbill Festival)

What motivates you to keep PBE running?

All of us are passionate about what we do. We always strive to bring the best experience for our PBE family and have many beautiful memories that keep us motivated. Over the years, we've received so many letters and handmade gifts; a fan baked a cake for us and another even got us homemade food. A group of girls waited for more than two hours after a concert just to hug and give us letters. We all cried reading them. We don't just do events and concerts, we create memories with them, and this keeps us pushing on even when times are difficult.

What has been the most difficult obstacle in bringing Hallyu to India?

In the beginning, it was definitely the concept of holding a K-pop concert since it was such a new thing. We faced issues with sponsorships and selling tickets. The fans were also quite new to this concept, and we needed to know whether they would attend concerts. The vastness of India, the steep price of tickets and the difficulty of appealing to multiple fans were among the difficulties we faced. Thankfully, we fixed these problems over the years. The idea for PBE has always been to start small and gradually grow, and that's what we've been doing, one step at a time.

(KARD)

Do you think Hallyu is finally on the map in India? What projects are you working on? 

Of course. When we started in 2015, we were the only company in India promoting K-pop and bringing Korean artists here. We started with hardly 100 fans but now, we've met more than 50,000 of them through more than 20 events across the country. Over the last two years or so, many other companies have slowly entered this market, and this is evidence of K-pop's rapid growth and the potential of K-pop in India being recognized.

2020 was supposed to be filled with many exciting projects but everything is on hold because of COVID-19. We're working on three projects and hoping that the pandemic ends soon and safely. We miss the hustle of holding concerts and connections with fans.

chaey0726@korea.kr


*This article is written by a Korea.net Honorary Reporter. Our group of Honorary Reporters are from all around the world, and they share with Korea.net their love and passion for all things Korean.