A journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step.
From being a distant dream of electrical engineer Rahul Bakshi, Phoebus whose bread and butter is Corporate A/V’s and multimedia CD Roms, has in a short span of time, already begun creating animated content in association with publishers such as Times Multimedia.
The largely underrealised potential of the Indian home entertainment market (for animation) remains virtually untapped with only a handful local players. The only major player being Times Multimedia, which has succesfully leveraged its brand and distribution strengths to emerge as the front runner in the segment.
Speaking about Phoebus Creations, the CEO Rahul Bakshi said,”While still an electrical engineer working with Noetic solutions Chennai, I used to ideate about setting up a multimedia studio. I was very influenced by the Amar Chitra Katha and wanted to do something like that in flash. Phoebus was founded in 2002 and we began with creating animation and multimedia A/V’s for corporates.”
Contniuing Bakshi added, “By 2003 we started creating content in association Times Multimedia and have already completed the animation for Panchatantra, Aesop’s Fables and Jataka Tales.”
On being asked about the development cycle, Bakshi informed, “All the animation is done in flash. The initial title took us some time, because flash to VCD was still an unexplored process in India, the next one took us 2 months. It is great fun doing original content. Though the subjects like the Panhchatantra and fables are age old, we have included original scripts and screenplay with characters like MMC ….”Bole to Master Mouse Catcher” and others that sing songs from latest Hindi hits, making the characters more identifiable with today’s young audiences”
“Phoebus is already developing content for other producers now. We are doing a 6 part series Akbar- Birbal for SGIPL and have completed Cinderella. Both prouducers are Mumbai based.”
Did the lure of the Big bucks in the sweatshop industry ever catch his fancy? ” No. The fun and the money (long term) lies in creating IP. Right from royalties to licensing for games, comics, films and merchandising, IP has a large mine of potential to offer. We are very happy with the work we are doing. If anything, we want to get into serials and TV content business and in fact we have initiated talks with a couple of kids channels. We also have been sent feelers from some regional channels” added the eager Phoebus CEO.
“Animation mind you, is team work and is never an individual effort. My entire 20
member team has worked hard, there’s a lot of talent in house.” concluded Bakshi.