Animation studios' preference for IPR dims job scenario

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Mumbai, Jul 20 : With most animation studios moving away from outsourcing work and focusing on creating their own intellectual property rights (IPR), professionals in this segment face the grim prospects of being unemployed, say industry experts.

Recently, Prana Studio, which is working on Kuchi Kuchi Hota Hai, has terminated around 100-120 artists. Even at UTV Toons, around 70-100 artists are finding it difficult to get through to another studio after the exit of two of its big-ticket projects—Arjuna and Dream Blanket.

Industry analysts say that there is a slowdown in the employment opportunity in the animation industry and most of the bigger studios have not only stopped hiring new talent, but are reducing the current workforce.

Interestingly, there are around 10,000 professionals in the Indian animation space and there is a need for an additional 25,000 by the end of this year. The compounded annual growth rate of Indian animation industry is around 35% and is expected to reach $950 million by 2009, according to estimates.

Even Nasscom has been advocating for facilitating training in order to increase workforce and talent. However, industry observers question the need for training activity, when there are not enough jobs available.

One of the close watchers of the industry, who didn’t want to be named, said, “Most of the bigger studios are now slowly moving towards creating intellectual property rights (IPR) and have either stopped outsource work completely or reduced the number of such work.”

Most of the IPRs are in the form of animation movies and the majority of the studios do not have the experience of handling such projects. In most of the cases, it has gone way beyond the stipulated budget, which is why studios are curtailing talent.

AK Madhavan, CEO, Crest Animation, said, “I have heard such a lull going on in the marketplace.” However, since Crest is focused on overseas projects, there is a continuous workflow.

The two projects that UTV was working on were budgeted close to Rs 40 crore each. Tata Elxsi is now doing Arjuna and Prime Focus will do Dream Blanket and both studios have picked up around 50 artists.