From go-karting to pizza-making: India Inc turns to curated activities for deeper employee bonding

Curated experiences, by contrast, offer higher engagement in shorter timeframes, better return on investment and greater flexibility.

At Accenture, employees are encouraged to design experiences together, connecting over interests ranging from music and sports to photography, gaming leagues and pet-parent meetups.

In one initiative, staff organised a book fair at the company’s Bhubaneswar office, where more than 160 books across genres found new homes, helping colleagues connect through shared reading recommendations. “We believe that a strong sense of belonging and purpose is built through meaningful, everyday connections – not generic team-building activities,” said Lakshmi Chandrasekharan, CHRO at Accenture in India. “This belief shapes our culture and how we bring our diverse, multigenerational workforce together in ways that feel authentic and personal.”

Platforms that partner with organisations to curate such activities are also seeing rising demand.

Experience Platforms See Rise in QueriesAlive, an experience tech platform, is seeing strong demand from technology and fintech companies as well as fast-growing startups.

The company has worked with organisations such as Google, Amazon and Mercedes-Benz.

In one instance, a leadership team from Mercedes-Benz built a wooden car together in a woodcraft studio, with the finished piece now displayed in the company’s office as a symbol of collaboration. “In the last six months alone, we’ve received enquiries from over 350 companies. Multiple corporate teams have participated in our horse-riding and forest safari experiences, which combine learning, interaction with animals and outdoor exploration,” Vivek Kumar, founder of Alive, told ET. The company has also organised experiences around pottery, baking pizzas from scratch in curated culinary labs and go-karting.

Most corporate experiences cost Rs 1,500 to Rs 3,000 per person, depending on the format, location and level of customisation, according to platforms ET spoke with. Leadership programmes and more bespoke experiences are priced higher.

Trebound, another experiential engagement platform, is seeing more than 500 corporate enquiries a month, with demand steadily rising. “The period between October and December last year saw a 16.5% jump in enquiry volume compared with April-June,” said Arun Mahendran, cofounder of Trebound.

“There is a decisive shift toward smaller, more focused engagements. More than half of all enquiries are for groups below 50 people and 85% are for groups under 100, showing that companies are clearly moving away from large, generic offsites toward curated experiences for specific teams,” he said.

In recent months, the company has organised experiences such as snake boat races and Kalaripayattu martial arts training in Kerala for SAP, and an app-based treasure hunt across a 100-acre property where teams navigated clues and solved challenges for WorkIndia. Companies such as InMobi and Glance have also built interest-based clubs where employees connect over shared passions.