Following a 10-year stint building Cosmos-Maya, India’s most successful animation studio, from a 30-member team to a 1200+ strong animation powerhouse, Anish Mehta has decided to move on from his role as CEO.
Under Mehta’s leadership, the studio has grown multifold owing to his strong ability to maintain a fine balance between business and creativity. He is credited with achieving quite a few milestones not only for the studio but also for the industry at large. Mehta had been the CEO and minority shareholder of Cosmos-Maya since 2012.
Commenting on his exit, Mehta said, “I would like to thank Ketan and Deepa, the promoters of Cosmos-Maya for trusting me with the opportunity of growing the company. I would also like to extend gratitude to our previous investors KKR backed Emerald Media, Rajesh Kamat and angel investor Tilak Sarkar for providing the right guidance and support on this journey. It has been a great pleasure working with the current investor, TPG affiliate NewQuest Capital Partners and I wish them and the team of Cosmos-Maya all the very best for future growth and to carry the legacy forward.”
During his tenure, the company grew with four different business streams globally and a revenue and EBITDA growth of 25x+ from 2012 to 2022. Globally he spearheaded efforts towards co-productions with European and other international players, which were able to sell in 100+ countries the world over.
Mehta led the studio’s foray into original Indian animation IP creation with the launch of Motu Patlu, India’s most successful animation series. Post that, the studio created over 10,000 half hours of kids’ animation content across 20+ shows; maintaining a 50 per cent+ market share of the original Indian kids and family content space for a decade. The studio’s key clients include – Nickelodeon, Disney, Cartoon Network, Sony, Amazon Prime Video, Disney+ Hotstar, Netflix, Discovery Kids, Facebook and YouTube.
His most notable achievement was to steadily attract organized investment into the business and consistently give investors a profitable exit through a higher valuation of the company. He played an instrumental role in getting private equity investors into the Indian animation business, first with KKR backed Emerald Media and later with TPG affiliate NewQuest Capital Partners.
He also led the initiative of building the company’s YouTube network, WowKidz with 35 channels, which achieved 80 million+ subscribers, and 41 billion+ views worldwide across 10+ languages in a short span of five years. “I feel very passionately about content creators and believe that digital media has offered a rather egalitarian and equalizing platform to all creators. I find the best way to express my appreciation is to be able to support and mentor the new generation of digital content creators as they set out to create path-breaking content that will have a positive impact on countless lives of kids and family audiences. The intention is to partner with global investors and pioneers to achieve this vision,” said Mehta.
He will be soon announcing his new venture sometime this year.