Animation Industry in India

A silent technological revolution happened once Emile Courtet created the world's first animated cartoon on standard picture film in 1908. There was no stopping the revolution that would ultimately entice children and adults alike in the decades to come.
India albiet a bit late, has caught up in this industry with some really promisng animation work. Many foreign companies including Disney and Warner Brothers have approached Indian companies as they offer the lowest prices for animation production and technical manpower. Also, India offers other benefits such as upto date software and hardware platforms and a well-established entertainment industry.
JadooWorks is one of the few high profile companies that has been exporting high-end animation.The company is presently working on some big projects for the Indian market. When asked why many companies outsource their services  instead of concentrating on the local market, senior marketing manager for  JadooWorks Raj Gopal Iyer said,  "Animation is very expensive. It requires a huge budget that many Indian film makers cannot afford. While live action would cost Rs 7-8 lakh to film, an animation sequence would cost Rs 7-8 crore. It would take the budget of  The Lord of the Rings for any Indian animation company to make a living without outsourcing their services."
However, JadooWorks has been working on some intresting inhouse  projects such as the cartooon series on Lord Krishna in collabration with ISCKON and has hired the Emmy award-winning animation writer Jeffrey Scott to work on the script of the movie. They have also worked on a cartoon series called Bombay Dogs, which has two street mongrels-turned-amateur detectives, Moti and Kaloo, who fight crime on the streets of Bombay. Besides these two series, they have worked on cartoons such as The multi colored jackal, Daddy and many others. The WWE game ‘WWE Mania,' too, is a JadooWorks creation.
In spite of steady growth in the past few years, the animation industry has stumbled often. Many companies find hardly any talent in India that they can exploit. Although there are many talented fine art students and artists from rural background, there is a lack of intiative to enroll such students.The problem also lies in the fact that most of these students are unable to pay hefty fees of Rs 50,000-100,000 charged by animation schools.
Also, parents are very resistant to the idea of their child working in the animation industry. Chetan of ANTS- Animation Training School says, "It's not only parents of talented students, it's parents in general. They feel animation is just an extension of drawing classes and will fetch nothing much. Then comes their aversion to children getting glued to the TV watching cartoons in their free time. So the perception is that their kids will get nowhere with animation. Besides, there are hardly 40 studios with 5000-6000 workers in India. When these figures are compared with industry leaders such as Japan, India needs another 25-30 years to catch up."
Despite what Chetan says, things are changing with the boom in the animation market. Satellite channels such as Cartoon Network and Nickelodeon are establishing themselves in the entertainment industry and have created a market for kids' shows and programming. Disney and Animax from Sony have also joined the race.
Also, cartoons and children's programs have created a strong consumer demand for toys, games, and snacks among other goods, which has brought favorable ad revenue for these niche channels. This in turn has propelled a demand for fresh ideas in the animation industry. Although the news seems heartening, excessive foreign programming content has been the bone of contention between animation companies and satellite channels.
While most governments abroad restrict foreign programming and prefer local content, there has been no such move from the Indian government. Currently APAI (Animation Producers' Association of India) is in discussion with the government to enforce a rule restricting foreign content and give a boost to local content.
The future seems bright, as the mobile phone industry has given the much-needed impetus via cell phone games. Several Indian companies such as Dhruva and Maya have been developing games for phone companies and many others have been designing new games for the Sony Play station and the Microsoft X box. Local advertisements and new serials have also been increasingly using animation for their sequences. Many companies like JadooWorks have been taking rural artists and amateur fine art students into their fold and training them and later employing them.
Animation is also set to enter new fields like aviation and corporate films. So with a predicted USD 2 billion animation business entering India in the next three years, animation is no kid stuff.