As it opens its doors to the public on Tuesday, Wonderla amusement park in Chennai flexes its muscles on multiple levels. Spread across 64 acres and featuring 43 rides, it will be one of the biggest amusement parks in the country, built at a cost of 611 crore rupees.
But its biggest flex will be in how the company behind it hopes it will propel the parks and amusement sector in India to achieve thrust velocity.
“The Indian leisure economy is entering a very interesting phase,” said Arun K Chittilapilly, executive chairman & MD of Wonderla Holidays Ltd, “Rising incomes, the desire for meaningful family time, and a shift from “products to experiences” are transforming how Indians spend. We believe amusement parks will be a major beneficiary of this wave.”
“What’s exciting is the direction the market is headed,” he added.
India’s outdoor recreation sector (call it amusement parks or whatever) has had a sketchy trajectory, even if the latent interest has never been in doubt. From a culture of circuses, acrobat shows and travelling fairs to small-scale ride parks, adventure zones and the like, it’s been a part of the local way of life, though scaling up probably happened in the 1980s, first with Appu Ghar in Delhi followed by EsselWorld in Mumbai.
While both had a good run for a while—there were multiple newer entrants across the landscape like water parks and such, the nineties and later turned out to be a veritable graveyard for the country’s nascent amusement park sector. Appu Ghar had to move out from its prime location in central Delhi when its lease ran out—the growing need for land by both the adjoining Supreme Court, as well as the expanding Delhi Metro meant the private operator had to shift out to Gurgaon (Gurugram) in the suburbs.
It never really recovered, with Covid proving to be the last straw. Similar was the fate of Gurgaon’s own ambitious recreational complex focusing on performing arts and artefacts titled ‘Kingdom of Dreams.’
The story was pretty similar be it EsselWorld in Mumbai, or Kishkinta in Chennai, the latter ambitiously launched by Navodaya Appachen, the man who produced India’s first 3D film My Dear Kuttichathan (Chota Chetan in Hindi) and ploughed the profits into the ambitious world-class amusement park.
However, the park never really recovered from a series of operational issues including flooding as well as a lethal accident on one of the rides in 2016.
If Chittilapilly sounds cocky confident, it is probably because his approach is based on sound business principles rather than approaching theme parks like some life dream or ‘flight of fancy’ (like some predecessors in the sector did), and keeping in mind market trends, financial sustainability and most of all, the immense potential it offers in a nation under fast transformation.
“After 25 years of running Wonderla, we feel we’ve understood what works in the Indian market—the right mix of global-standard attractions, value-led pricing, strong safety and hygiene, and disciplined operational excellence that allows us to scale sustainably,” he said.
The family got into theme parks with Veegaland outside Kochi, which was later re-christened to Wonderla, before expansion (“our approach has been to expand strategically than aggressively”) to Hyderabad, Bhubaneshwar, Bengaluru and now, Chennai, becoming India’s biggest amusement park brand.
“Rising incomes, the desire for meaningful family time, and a shift from “products to experiences” are transforming how Indians spend,” he said, adding, “We believe amusement parks will be a major beneficiary of this wave.”
Perhaps one reason for Wonderla’s success would be the careful planning that looks into land and financial status (the company is listed and profitable, presently valued at around 4,000 crore rupees) and of course, the latest trends—when Wonderla opened its biggest park in Bengaluru near Bidadi, it came with an attached resort, since the team realised that cityslickers were increasingly into ‘staycations’; recent additions across the chain include VR-based attractions, themed zones, expanding F&B options and digital ticketing.
If Covid lockdowns proved the death knell for many of Wonderla’s sector compatriots, the ‘revenge outing’ seen since then has boosted Chittilapilly’s belief that the market is set for a massive boost – not just Wonderla, but places like Maharashtra’s Imagica as well as Hyderabad’s Ramoji Film City are all reporting increasing footfalls. And talking numbers, the Indian market presently is around Rs 11,000 crore while that of the US is estimated at around 100 lakh crore in rupees equivalent.
While India’s limited economics may still keep it away from such mind-boggling figures for now, the scope is immense, as Chittilapilly quipped, “India is young, people are earning more, and they are hungry for great experiences...There is still a huge runway for growth, and I believe the best years for this industry are ahead of us.”
