Animation sector still hard pressed for skilled manpower in North

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Chandigarh, Apr 1: 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.