India's animation sector moves up value chain

INDIA--The animated films market is growing at a fast rate in India, where in the last one year alone, nearly 85 such shows were announced.

2008 saw the box office release of several animated movies in the country, such as Roadside Romeo, Ghatothkach, Dashavatar and My Friend Ganesha 2.

Sangeeta Gupta, vice president, Nasscom, told ZDNetAsia in a phone interview: "In the last two years, the domestic market for animation has grown significantly. And so has the quality of production."

The mainstream film industry too is increasingly using animation and special effects. In the last 18 months, Bollywood has released several Hindi movies with special effects and animation, such as Drona, Taare Zameen Par, Jodha Akbar and Love Story 2050.

According to Nasscom, a total of 85 domestic animation movies have been announced over the last year and 28 are in different stages of production.

Gupta said: "Animation companies have also started focusing on building original IP (intellectual property), which they can leverage in terms of merchandising and TV broadcast revenues."

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Big boom seen in animation sector

NEW DELHI: American IT firm Hewlett-Packard is predicting a big boom in India’s animation industry with companies now willing to move away from outsourcing projects from the US and Europe to their own co-productions.

Anurag Gupta, country manager (workstations, personal systems group), Hewlett-Packard India, said the entry of domestic firms into co-production is luring international giants such as Walt Disney to the country.

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Animation sector still hard pressed for skilled manpower in North

With a string of successful animation movies coming out of the Indian closet, the animation sector is poised to tread the growth trajectory. The entry of various global media giants into the arena of media and entertainment in India is also set to give a major thrust to the $10 billion industry. Walt Disney, BBC, JC Decaux, Viacom, Astro, Blackstone, Temasek, Warburg Pincus, Goldman Sachs etc have already made a buzz in the industry.

But animation industry is still hard-pressed for skilled manpower. Talking about the impediments, Navin Gupta, COO of Mumbai-based Maya Academy of Advanced Cinematics (MAAC) said, "Right now, about 3,00,000 students are undergoing training in animation technology across India. Most of the professionals are still at the entry level. The way the industry is growing, even these 300,000 professionals will not be enough to handle the workload in the coming years. We have about 25 operational Frameboxx training centres with about 3,000 students enrolled for different programmes. We aim to impart training to 10,000 students within this year by adding 15 new training centres. We need more skilled people than the available pool of 10,000 artistes and 2,000 programmers that we have today."

As per the figures released by KPMG business advisory services recently, the animation sector has attracted investments of $1.5 billion out of which 40% accounts for FDI. The media and entertainment sector in India offers tremendous growth opportunity and is set to touch $21 billion by 2010. The Indian animation and gaming industry is projected to reach the $1 billion mark by 2010 from the current combined revenues of $402 million.

Gupta further added, "The fresh lease of investment, which is to the tune of $8-10 million, will be enthused into new training centres and five incubation centres to help the students prune their skills through live projects. We are planning to add more verticals to our portfolio such as online training and DVDs to diversify our reach. A number of Bollywood production houses like BR Films, Adlabs, Pritish Nandy Communication and UTV, besides Percept Picture Company and Shemaroo, are into making animation movies.

Source : http://www.financialexpress.com/

North set to have its share in growing animation sector

Increase in the use of special effects on screen and success of animated movies like Hanuman has given birth to animation industry in India. According to a recent survey by Nasscom, animation industry is expected to grow by 25% annually. Talking to FE about this, Naveen Gupta, director, Frameboxx animation studio said, "There is growing demand for animated movies. These movies not only attract children but also lure older people. Also, animation has other various applications like in architecture, advertising and product design."

Commenting on the job prospects in the city he added, "Springing up of large television channels in the region has given boost to the demand for animation. Also it has become more easy to set up studios now, as the price of hardware has reduced significantly."

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The name of the game is animation

If art and technology could merge to create a business venture, the animation industry would fit the description nicely. With India’s emergence as a global outsourcing leader in the late 1990s, initial efforts were made to create a vibrant animation outsourcing industry.

There was intense interest from Hollywood and elsewhere to use the unbeatable combination of the country’s artistic talent and low production costs. However, questions of quality and scale were soon raised and the pipeline of outsourcing contracts virtually dried up in the early 2000s.

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