Deccan Rock: Marching On

Metal festival organizers Orka Networks co-founder Renu Rau looks back at their 10-year run and the challenges they had to overcome along the way.

- Nabeela Shaikh

The first edition of metal festival Deccan Rock witnessed a logistical breakdown that's probably every concert's worst nightmare one of the barricades seperating the audience from the artist area fell apart, and the crowd started pouring into the green room of Swedish Viking metal band and festival headliners Amon Amarth. Organizers Orka Network’s founder Renu Rau recalls, “All the bouncers had left by then so it was just me between the crowd and Johan [Hegg, vocalist]. And he’s such a huge dude so at one point, it was him protecting me and not me protecting him!” The second edition in 2011 turned out to be a “proper disaster,” as Rau describes, with not enough takers for the heavy-hitter lineup of 19 bands from across 11 countries over two days. “It ended up being too many bands, too much money that went into it and in the end, we sold very few tickets. Our title sponsor actually cheated us, so we lost almost Rs. 35 lakhs there,” she explains. By the third edition in 2013, the organizers decided to take Deccan Rock on tour, traveling to four cities with French metal band Hacride.

Despite the intermittent setbacks, Orka Networks have grown to become one of the few large-scale metal and rock gig organizers in India, bringing down the likes of Dutch prog metallers Textures, Polish tech-death band Decapitated and Finnish rock act Poets of the Fall. The Hyderabad-based company also lays claim to organizing college festivals and private gigs that have drawn crowds of up to 15,000—all of which has contributed to the learning process.