As India's live events industry scales up, culture-first venues provide the first fillip to indie artists

As India’s live event economy recalibrates amid rapid expansion, a shift is underway. In FY2025, the organized segment of the live events industry was valued at Rs 20,861 crore, with a 15% year-on-year growth in India, as per the whitepaper ‘India's Live Events Economy: A Strategic Growth Imperative’ by the Ministry of Information and Broadcasting. While stadium concerts and large-format performance spaces continue to dominate headlines, the real engine of artistic innovation is increasingly found in smaller, culture-first venues. These are spaces that prioritise originality, community, and sustained creative ecosystems over scale alone.

Large venues operate under unavoidable commercial pressures. Filling expansive rooms requires predictable programming, familiar names, and formats that minimise risk. Smaller venues, by contrast, are able to function as incubators, testing new sounds, nurturing emerging talent, and allowing artists to experiment without the weight of mass appeal.

“Talent in India is mind-boggling,” says Girjashanker Vohra, co-founder of Delhi-based live music venue Depot48. “But the packaging and infrastructure around independent music still lags. Smaller venues can step in to bridge that gap.” Depot48, which operates as a neighbourhood bar programming live music five nights a week, exemplifies this approach. Its model balances economic sustainability with artistic freedom through layered programming often by pairing emerging artists with established acts, collaborating with similar venues for touring circuits, and occasionally using brand partnerships to underwrite culturally significant shows but ones that may not be commercially heavy.

This flexibility, Girjashanker notes, allows artists to try new genres, languages, and formats, something large venues often cannot afford to do at scale. He adds, “It’s why so many musicians who performed at Depot in their early phases, from Prateek Kuhad and Tajdar Junaid to PCRC, The Revisit Project and others, continue to return.”

Depot also tapped early into developing the brand beyond music and looked at redefining how inclusivity is practised, particularly within the queer community.  Co-founder Vikas, who oversees front-of-house operations, traces this ethos back to the venue’s earliest days. “There was a real lack of spaces where people could go and feel safe,” he explains. “We wanted to build something that wasn’t run-of-the-mill—something that didn’t exist at the time.”

Rather than limiting allyship to Pride Month programming, venues like Depot48 have embedded queer initiatives into their year-round operations. Depot’s Pink Thursday, which prioritise queer artists and audiences, have run consistently for nearly a decade.

It is with this consistency that a self-regulating community environment has been fostered. There are no dress codes, no restrictive entry rules, and no bouncers. “People who come for gigs here are like-minded. Patrons get the vibe. They respect music as an art form and a livelihood,” says Vikas. 

Looking ahead to 2026, there are three clear trends emerging in India’s live performance culture, as per Girjashanker. Audiences are gravitating towards intimate, discovery-driven experiences. Rather than polished, formulaic performances, there is a growing appetite for original music and closer artist-audience interaction. 

India’s indie ecosystem is becoming more linguistically and culturally expansive. Artists are increasingly confident performing original material in multiple languages, drawing from regional influences, and blending traditions. Third, cross-disciplinary collaborations are gaining momentum. Music intersecting with visual art, spoken word, movement, and even culinary experiences are becoming more common. He reiterates, “Smaller venues are naturally better suited to incubate these formats because they allow experimentation without the heavy commercial pressure.”

India is gaining traction as a concert hotspot with top international artists, from Coldplay, Travis Scott, to Tyla, Jason Derulo, performing across the length and breadth of the country. The balancing act though is provided by smaller venues that keep the buzz alive year long. “In the coming year, I see more venues doing music, but often as background or an add-on. Some places do themed nights, but I don’t see serious programming becoming widespread. People may stick to stadiums and large-format venues. I hope it changes for the sake of artists,” says Vikas.

As India’s live music ecosystem evolves, the role of smaller, culture-first venues is becoming increasingly clear. They are not competing with large-format venues; they are complementing them by building the foundations from which the next generation of artists, audiences, and cultural movements will emerge.