Kickstarting Animation India 2005, NASSCOM President Kiran Karnik spoke about the steps needed to be taken by the animation industry to face the challenges in it’s way to growth.
“Lots of clients abroad are concerned whether India will be able to deliver. We need to have large amount of trained human resources in India. Our challenge is, how do we create a similar kind of availability of manpower just like in IT.” said Karnik.
“The numbers are not adequate. We have many willing partners however unless we have a total ecosystem, these things wont work. There are many gaps in the ecosystem for the animation industry” he added.
Karnik also brought to the attention of the delegates the fact that a lot of VC firms from outside the country were looking at the Indian animation industry.
“India is still not very well known as a destination for animation. How can we get known names and major studios to set up facilities here? How can we build partnerships with those who are already working?” stated the Nasscom president.
Talking about localised content, Karnik stated that,”Today TV & Film in India can afford just a little bit of animation. For the next few years animation for Indian content is going to be limited. Gaming however is emerging as a new market within India – MMOG (Massive Multiplayer Online Gaming) seems to hold a lot of promise.”
“The combination of domain specialisation of the creative industry with the IT expertise will result in high value products” concluded the Nasscom president.
Following Karnik’s inaugural address was a presentation on Indo – Korean collaboration in animation & gaming by Kim Young Joo CEO GITCT.
“There is a lot of potential in Indo Korean collaboration in gaming” : Kim Young Joo.
The GITCT CEO began his presentation by stating that “The korean government has designated creative industry as one of the 6 major industries in Korea”
“The explosion of content demand is due to various media being developed” explained Kim.
Presenting some facts and figures on the Korean animation industry, Kim stated that the industry was worth US Dollars 270 Million (0.4 % of the world market).
“We have around 200 studios and 10,000 artists with 93 contracted productions currently under development” he informed.
According to Kim’s presentation the Korean industry is moving from OEM to original content production at a fast rate. In 2000, 13.5 % work done by the Korean industry was original content while by 2002 end it had moved upto 35%.
Amongst other interesting statistics mentioned by Kim was the startling figure of 10 million households with high speed broadband. (Korea has a total of 45 million households). A lot of the gaming revolution in Korea has been made possible due to broadband.
Following are a few graphs made at the presentation which have been replicated by Animation ‘xpress for its readers.
