India's animation can gain upto 25% of global share by 2025

• Recently, the government also announced setting up of a Centre for Excellence with the Indian Institute of Technology, Bombay to launch courses in AVGC and promote entrepreneurship in the sector.

NEW DELHI : The Indian animation and visual effects industry, which commands around 10% of the global market share, has the potential to reach 20-25% by 2025, according to the latest media and entertainment industry report by the Boston Consulting Group (BCG) and Confederation of Indian Industry (CII).

The two segments, which have together grown 17% from $0.7 billion in 2015 to $1.3 billion in 2019, can create 75,000-120,000 jobs over the next five years with their contribution to the nation’s gross domestic product rising by 0.06-0.08% over the same period, the report said.

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Over the years, Indian-origin companies have been lauded for their visual effects design in several Hollywood films. Double Negative (DNEG), a Prime Focus group company, has won the Oscar four times for titles such as Blade Runner 2049, Interstellar, Ex Machina, and Inception. Meanwhile, Thor: The Dark World, was outsourced to Mumbai’s Prana Studios Ltd and Bengaluru-based Mr. X contributed to 2018 Oscar winner The Shape of Water.

India must learn to leverage its strengths to build its own animation, visual effects, gaming, comics (AVGC) industry, including strong technology skills and competitively priced talent, said the BCG report. States such as Karnataka, Telangana, and Maharashtra are taking the lead in AVGC promotion through infrastructure and fiscal incentives.

“These are sectors that do not just have great export potential to demonstrate the soft power of India but can also emerge as examples of Atmanirbhar Bharat (self-reliant India) if home-grown startups are given adequate push," Amit Khare, secretary, ministry of information and broadcasting, had said at an event referring to AVGC and educational technologies that came to the fore following the coronavirus outbreak.

Recently, the government also announced the setting up of a centre for excellence at Indian Institute of Technology, Bombay, to launch courses in AVGC and promote entrepreneurship.

Information and broadcasting minister Prakash Javadekar had earlier said that animation, visual effects, gaming and comic are sunrise sectors and Indians are providing back-end support to top filmmakers of the world. “It is time that these professionals started doing more of this for our own films so that the use of animation and graphics in Indian films grows manifold." Javadekar had said.

The push for animation is based on the success of Hollywood flicks such as The Jungle Book and The Lion King, whose 3D effects make for immersive big-screen viewing.