Stall fabrication at Raymond Ground, Thane

Exhibiting at Raymond Ground, Thane

Raymond Ground, Thane is one of Thane's key exhibition venues, hosting trade fairs, consumer expos and corporate events throughout the year. Everything from the first 3D concept to clearing the stand after dismantle is handled by one team and one project manager.

A venue imposes a rulebook, and the stall has to be built to it: how high you can go, whether you can hang anything, what you may fix into the floor, how much power you get and which hours you can work. We read that rulebook at design stage, not at build-up.

Placed against the rest of the Thane list, Raymond Ground, Thane is the most open end of it — no walls, no ceiling, no fixed limits, and no shelter either. Knowing that before you design is what stops a stand being drawn for a hall and then built in a ballroom, which is the most expensive revision in this business.

As a Tier 1 exhibition city, Thane carries 2 named venues as well as 11 venue categories, which is why two shows in the same week can need entirely different builds. The practical consequence of that density is congestion at build-up: shared bays, lift queues and a hard clearance deadline that nobody moves.

Building on an open exhibition ground

An open ground is the most flexible and the most exposed option in any city. There is no door to limit panel size and usually no ceiling to limit height, because vehicles can reach the stand itself — but weather, dust, ground level and generator power all have to be designed in rather than assumed, and a hangar or German tent normally sits over the top of the whole thing.

We treat Raymond Ground, Thane as an open ground or maidan for planning purposes and then confirm every figure against the organiser's exhibitor pack for your edition, because rules are issued per show rather than per building.

What to ask the organiser about Raymond Ground, Thane

Send the organiser this list before you commission anything. Each answer removes a contingency from the quote, and at open ground or maidan two or three of them change the structure rather than the finish.

Who exhibits at Thane venues, and what that changes

The sector mix in Thane is automobile, engineering, pharma, textiles and real estate, and each of those brings its own non-negotiables onto a stand. The table below is what we design against at open ground or maidan before a single visual is drawn, because most of these requirements are structural or electrical rather than decorative.

Most Thane exhibitors are selling to more than one of those audiences, which is an argument for a layout rather than a style. Give the real estate audience the frontage and the automobile audience the back corner, and the stand stops trying to be two things in the same square metre.

Stall sizes and lead times for Raymond Ground, Thane

Most stands at a venue like this fall between 9 and 72 sq.m. The table below uses the same formula as our stall planner — storage at 10% of area up to 18 sq.m and 15% above, a meeting corner at 5% unless you are hosting meetings, display taking the remainder — so you can sanity-check a quote against the space you have actually booked.

The figures are the same ones our stall planner uses, so a quote can be checked against them line by line: storage at 10% of the area up to 18 sq.m and 15% above it, a meeting corner at 5% unless you are actually hosting meetings, display taking whatever remains, one staff member per 9 sq.m, and the number of visitors who can stand in the stall at once coming out at display area divided by 2.5.

Designing a stand that works at Raymond Ground, Thane

On an open ground your competition is the sky, not the neighbouring stand. Height, a roof line of your own and lighting that still works at dusk are what make a stand findable from the far side of the ground.

The stand strategy at a venue like this starts with where visitors come from. Work out which direction the main flow arrives from, put your strongest visual on that face, and keep the entry corner clear so people can step in without committing to a conversation.

Exhibitors here come largely from automobile, engineering and pharma, and an automobile audience has specific expectations: product visible, specification available, and somewhere to talk without shouting. We design for that rather than applying a generic layout.

What else is in Thane

The named venue list for Thane runs to 1 building on top of this one: Dr Kashinath Ghanekar Auditorium. Taking each name at its word, they divide into 1 auditorium, hall or cultural centre — which is why a stand that worked at one Thane venue is not automatically a stand that works at the next.

Underneath the named venues sit the 11 venue categories we cover in every city, Thane included: open exhibition grounds, mall atriums, university & college campuses, industry association halls, stadium & sports complexes, corporate campus event spaces, industrial estate expo grounds, government exhibition grounds, resort & lawn venues, 5-star hotel ballrooms and convention & banquet halls. A large share of exhibiting activity in India happens in those rooms rather than in exhibition halls, which is why they get their own pages rather than a footnote.

Exhibiting elsewhere in Maharashtra

Beyond Thane we build in 9 other Maharashtra cities: Mumbai, Pune, Navi Mumbai, Nagpur, Nashik and Aurangabad, plus 3 others. Same drawings, same workshop, same project manager — which is what makes a second city cheaper than the first rather than a repeat of it.

A stand engineered for this venue is rarely a one-show asset. Frame-and-skin construction lets the structure be stored and re-skinned for the next city, which is why the second show in a programme costs materially less than the first.

Running several cities in a season works best with one structure and several graphic sets. The panels are numbered and stored between shows, each city gets its own print and its own organiser paperwork, and the same project manager carries the job from the first show to the last.