It’s headcount 4x at Prime Focus

MUMBAI: Digital post-production and VFX specialist Prime Focus plans to more than quadruple the headcount at its Royal Palms facility, which houses around 200-odd animation and visual effects artists.

It will add around 700 artists and animators at the studio, its biggest facility, in the next year or so.

The expansion will entail an investment of Rs 40-45 crore, Nishant Fadia, chief financial officer of the company said. Prime Focus has four studios in Mumbai and one each in Hyderabad and Chennai.

It also has four studios in London. The company is looking at inorganic growth, too. It recently acquired UTV’s entire post-production business for around Rs 12 crore and is currently in talks to acquire Suresh Productions’ post-production arm, Spirit DI, for a deal expected to cost a little over that.

Meanwhile, Prime Focus is expanding its presence abroad. On Thursday, it announced the acquisition of two US-based entities — Post Logic Studios and Frantic Films — for around $43 million (Rs 170 crore). DNA Money had, in August this year, reported about the company’s plans to enter the US market through the inorganic route.

Fadia said the acquisition process should be completed before the calendar-end. “Both companies have been loss-making units and their combined turnover is just about one-third of our overall turnover.

However, we are very optimistic about turning them profitable in the first year of operations as we did with our acquisitions in the UK,” he said.