Animation Industry Revenues To Reach $15 B By ’08: Survey

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Bangalore: Will India witness another ‘outsourcing’ boom from the animation industry, globally? A recent study conducted by Andersen Consulting states that the Indian animation industry is expected to reach $15 billion by 2008.

“Currently the Indian animation industry is pegged at Rs $550 million and we expect a growth of 30 per cent annually for the next three years,” says Chetan S, director-business development, Animation Training School.

“India is emerging as a destination for outsourcing assignments from global studios such as Walt Disney Pictures and Cartoon Network. Although most Indian production houses still earn their bread and butter from low-end projects, some of the top companies are slowly moving up the value chain,” he added.

A study by NASSCOM forecasts that the global animation market will generate revenues worth $50-70 billion by 2005. Animation production from Indian producers is expected to go up from $0.6 billion in 2001 to $ 1.5 billion by 2005.

However, the corporate view is a little different. “There is not much work happening on the 3D animation front in India. Mostly it is on 2D. One of the major hurdles that we are experiencing in India is shortage of required skills for this industry,” says SS Dahiya, chairman and managing director, Compudyne Winfosystems Ltd.

“Today, adoption of animation in Indian cinemas is very low. Usually the West looks for previous works in animation in Indian cinema before giving us any work. In India, the budget for each movie is a few crores of rupees. But if you need to make a good movie like Spider Man or Independence Day, you require around Rs 100 crores, which is not possible in the Indian film industry,” adds Mr Dahiya.

He feels that the quality of animation from India needs improvement. “There are no animation studios in India, which can compete with Walt Disneys of the world. You need huge investments to set up such studios. The government needs to look into the requirements of this industry and support it,” he adds.

Various end user segments such as TV programmes, TV commercials, games, online education, CAD/CAE applications apart from feature films are slowly increasing the usage of animation in their work. But professionals who can handle animation and multimedia software like Maya, 3D Studio Max and Tictactoon, Flash, Giff Animator, Ulead, Adobe After Effects are in shortage, points out Mr Chetan.