Eternal’s District explores live-event venues to cut concert costs, counter AI threat
BENGALURU: Eternal’s District is exploring investments in dedicated live-event venues, betting that physical infrastructure can lower the cost of staging concerts and give the out-of-home consumption platform a more defensible business as artificial intelligence (AI) agents threaten to disrupt online bookings.
The company is in discussions with potential partners and governments on long-term projects, including public-private partnerships, Rahul Ganjoo, chief executive of District, said in an interview with Mint.
“Without dedicated live-event venues, it is difficult to build a sustainable business, because you spend a large amount of money setting up a venue only to take it down within a day,” Ganjoo said. Some temporary concert sites can cost over $1 million to build only to be dismantled within hours, he added.
District’s first bet is Terraform, a 16-acre outdoor entertainment arena in north Bengaluru, which it took over in September 2025. Its plug-and-play model includes facilities for artists, production crews, and audiences, reducing the need to build infrastructure from scratch for each concert.
Building new venues, however, will take time. Large additions to the network are unlikely within the next year, Ganjoo said. “It will be a long-drawn-out process. In the meantime, we’re exploring opportunities and working with partners to identify potential venues,” he added.
Supply constraints
District plans to focus initially on five to 10 major cities, where event supply and audience demand can support regular programming. It is also engaging with stakeholders in 10 to 15 cities to assess commercial viability.
Mumbai remains a particularly competitive market for concert infrastructure, Ganjoo said. The company is also exploring smaller venues for recurring events, allowing performers and formats to build audiences before moving to larger stages. Ganjoo declined to share specifics.
The strategy reflects a broader push to cater to consumers seeking more varied leisure experiences, from nostalgia-led concerts to weekday outings. “The overarching theme is that people want to spend more on different experiences, and not the same thing, to break that monotony,” Ganjoo said.
But building a venue network is only part of the challenge. Ankur Bisen, senior partner at retail consultancy The Knowledge Company, said District must first define the proposition it wants to offer, weighing options such as buying venues, building them or partnering with property owners.
“You have to rebuild this category from scratch,” Bisen said, citing considerations such as accessibility, urban planning and public safety.
He cautioned against assuming that expansion would require heavy investment in property. “It does not require heavy investment in real estate to make venues work. You can always hire out or operate a plug-and-play,” he said. Underutilized malls and other properties could provide space for operators with successful event concepts, Bisen added.
Ultimately, the proposition matters as much as the property itself. “You are limited by your own imagination in this space,” Bisen said.
AI threat
The venue strategy comes as Eternal flags the potential disruption of District’s business by AI agents, which could allow consumers to discover and book experiences without relying on the platform.
In its shareholder letter for the second quarter of fiscal year 2027 (Q2FY27), Eternal placed District in the “medium-to-high risk zone” for agent-led commerce. Unlike food delivery and quick commerce, where fulfilment infrastructure is central to the service, some of District’s offerings, including restaurant reservations and non-exclusive concert tickets, exist independently of the platform and can be accessed through other channels.
Eternal said the risk has made physical infrastructure and differentiated customer experiences important to District’s long-term prospects.
“A large part of durability in this business will come from building physical infrastructure and operations which deliver a differentiated customer experience,” Eternal’s chief financial officer Akshant Goyal said in the letter. “Like we mentioned earlier, where infrastructure becomes the product.”
The strategy will need to deliver growth while improving the platform’s financial performance. In the September quarter of FY27, District recorded net order value (NOV) of ₹3,259 crore, up 58% from a year earlier and 1.3% sequentially. NOV is the gross value of all orders minus discounts.
Its adjusted Ebitda loss was ₹64 crore, while its adjusted Ebitda margin improved to -2% of NOV from -3.1% a year earlier.
Eternal said District remained on track to reach adjusted Ebitda break-even within four to six quarters. It has set FY30 targets of ₹28,000 crore in NOV and ₹1,400 crore in adjusted Ebitda.
Beyond live events, District is also looking to make discovery and planning across leisure categories more seamless. Travel is among the categories consumers frequently ask about, but the company has yet to establish a clear strategy for entering it, Ganjoo said.