07/09/2026
“When you’ve been doing this for 25 years, people assume you’ve probably seen everything by now. We’ve learnt the opposite.
You never really know how an event will unfold. Two events may look exactly the same from the outside, but from inside, it's never the same. So experience, for us, has not been about becoming more relaxed, but about learning to prepare better. We still plan for the worst-case scenario. We still don’t take anything for granted. Because no matter how many successful events you’ve done, you’re only as good as your last one.
One thing we’ve held on to all these years is that a commitment is a commitment. Profit and loss will come and go. But if we’ve promised a client something, we honour it. We’ve always believed in promising reality and delivering delight. And when there are difficult choices to make, we fall back on the idea: Organisation First.
That kind of commitment does come at a cost.
For Sharath, work-life balance is still an idea that remains elusive. There are working weekends, and sometimes the thought that his children are growing up while so much of his time is spent at work does weigh on him. Yet, when an event ends, everything that was promised comes together, and the client walks away happy, there is a satisfaction that's difficult to explain.
Maybe that is also why the things that keep us grounded are things that are furthest from work. For Sharath, it is cricket, sport, his spiritual practices and time with his children. For Bhaskar, it is travel, farming, painting, reading, and his three children, with their floppy ears, wagging tails and the kind of welcome home that can put a long day into perspective. And for both of us, it's spending time with friends who have known us long before life in event management began.
Twenty-five years is a long time. Enough to make plenty of mistakes, solve thousands of problems and collect more stories than we can remember.
But not long enough to make us feel we’ve figured it out. Guess that’s a good thing.”
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Bhaskar and Sharath co-founded CBS that completed 25 years in the industry on 31 Aug 2026.
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