At animation summit, IT&BT minister SR Patil asserts that government will do all it takes to make the city the most preferred and lucrative outsourcing destination for the global FX and animation industry.
The lesser-known cousin of Bangalore’s IT/ITes industry, the animation-visual effects-gaming-comics sector, or AVGC for short, is looking out for that great leap forward.
The promise to that effect came from minister for information technology, biotechnology, and science and technology, SR Patil. The minister, who inaugurated a two-day industry meet in the city on Wednesday, asserted that his government would do all it takes to make the city the most preferred and lucrative outsourcing destination for the global FX and animation industry.
Patil was addressing leaders of the city’s relatively fledgling industry, who had gathered at the Karnataka Animation, Visual Effects, Gaming and Comics (KAVGC) Summit here. The minister spoke of the human capital of the city, which had propelled its IT sector as a global leader, and contended that the thrust of the state’s AVGC policy, believed to be the only one of its kind in the country, would be a capacity building. A number of digital art centres would be launched soon keeping this in mind, the minister said.
The policy, in fact, had been released by the previous BJP government in February 2012. The inputs for the document, however, had come from the Association of Bangalore Animation Industry (ABAI), the organiser of the KAVGC Summit.
ABAI president Biren Ghose, also the country head of Technicolor, described the association as a work in progress. Ghose stressed on the thought leadership to members that is provided by the association that is only five years old, and dwelt at length on the way ABAI has been exposing members to the best practices in the industry. The summit is only one of the channels.
ISN Prasad, principal secretary to the IT, BT, S&T department, said two critical points had been recognised by the state government: that Karnataka, and Bangalore in particular, had immense potential to become the leader in the country’s animation industry as well (compared with the older and bigger Mumbai and Chennai industries which were always film-driven); and that this sector being different from the IT industry, it had special needs.
Prasad said the government was in the process of implementing the KAVGC policy, and stressed on the need for a separate venture fund since banks were not comfortable with lending to the industry yet.
The inaugural session ended with Patil giving away the ABAI Leadership Excellence Award to Rajiv Chilakalapudi, the founder of Green Gold Animation.
Chilakalapudi, or Chilaka as he is popularly referred to in the industry, is the man behind India’s biggest animation phenomenon, Chhota Bheem.
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