NASSCOM Animation & Gaming India 2007: Session Wise Coverage
This year’s annual NASSCOM Animation & Gaming India 2007 summit was a milestone event, breaking a lot of new ground.
Setting things into motion, right at the beginning were top NASSCOM leaders like President Kiran Karnik and Chairman B. Ramalinga Raju stressing that “The time has come for “Right Brain” Dominance”
“Last 10-15 years we have used more of our left brain with a structured approach with defined spaces, the time now has come to be more creative and for dominance of the right brain. Todayâ€?s consumer will reward you only if you can â€?Createâ€? order out of chaos. There is a need for a change in the mindset and for pro activity” stressed Ramalinga Raju.
“In todayâ€?s chaotic world we cannot wait for the consumer to find order within the chaos and for us to execute things, we have to get active, create order and serve it to the consumer. Only then will we be well rewarded” he added.
Welcoming the industry to the event, NASSCOM President Kiran Karnik shared,” We now begin to see the viability of something happening not only globally but locally also, both for animation as well as gaming”
Karnik focused on two major topics in his address, Training and Government & Policy Support.
He also mentioned on the need for figuring out how startups could be given some impetus and stated that the government needed to create end to end facilities that could be used on a pay per use basis.
Talking about training, Karnik shared that while one could see a lot of positive developments within the industry, the area of training in the right way and on a large scale was yet not taking off.
“There is inadequacy in training, we donâ€?t see anything as large scale and substantial as we see in other areas. We have to work together with the government, there is scope to create world class facilities which could generate a lot of talent, for India as well as for the world” remarked Karnik.
“On its part, the industry has been very pro active and almost every company does its training on its own, but obviously we cannot depend only on â€?in companyâ€? training” he added.
Talking about the need for a long term vision, Karnik shared,”There is a formal committee at the PMO looking into animation and we need not only to look for tomorrow and day after, but also for the future”
Citing the example of countries like Canada and France, the NASSCOM President stated that,” We might want to collectively debate on the need for policy directives in order to give the industry a fillip. The Industry needs to collectively come out with a view and consolidate”
In his Inaugural address, NASSCOM Chairman B Ramalinga Raju stated,”We have come to clearly recognise the opportunity in front of us and have taken definitive steps. The nature of the industry and the size of the opportunity is much larger, an era of specialised services and super specialised services. Many markets in a vertical sense”
“If this is the size of the opportunity, we need to ask ourselves if we have the capability sets to meet it. The answer is no. There are limitations, it is not enough to do well or a reasonable job and we have to do better than other companies and other countries, even if we do a better job” he added.
“Capacity building, in my opinion will be a major industry in itself. We are using only 15% of the competencies being produced in our country with more than 3 million graduates passing out every year” he pointed out. “It is not traditional classroom teaching that is going to do the trick, we have to capture the various thousands of processes that we need to specialise in and and find ways of imparting practical obective training”
“We have to move fast” concluded the NASSCOM Chairman.
In a very frank and open way, Andhra Pradesh Principal Secretary to the IT & Communications Department Ratna Prabha shared that not much movement had happened since last year in terms of government support and involvement for setting up the Animation Institute, “We have worked very hard, but somehow this area has been neglected” she said and on a positive side she added that, “I however promise that this year we will have action and we will do things with the support of NASSCOM. We will definitely give a piece of land where an Academy can be set up and shall create a think tank to direct the initiative”
