The day two of FICCI Frames 2022 had many insightful sessions and one of them was on Importance of skilling for growth of M&E industry. Moderated by Punnaryug Artvision founder and FICCI AVGC Forum chair Ashish Kulkarni, the speakers for the session included Image Group founder and chairman Kumar Kannan, Pixel Village founder Radhakrishnan Chakyat, Frameboxx 2.0 CEO and director Ravi Gupta, Celebrity School founder Siddharth Prabhakar, Tron Education and Research founder Rahul Bojalwar, Aptech Ltd chief marketing officer Pravir Arora and Dance with Madhuri business head Neeraj Kumar. The keynote for the session was delivered by the Government of India, Ministry of Information and Broadcasting joint secretary (P&A) Vikram Sahay.
The panel discussed the need and importance of skilling, upskilling and reskilling for the success of the ever growing M&E industry. Kulkarni brought to fore the fact that it has been 109 years of cinema, 70 years of television and two decades of animation, visual effects and gaming, but we don’t have proper training institutions. “In our time there was no marking system for arts or art related subjects,” he said.
Some of the panelists pointed out that parents and students have vastly focused on commerce and science as a career option and very few people considered arts. They also noted that basics for science and commerce is also taught at school level but there’s hardly anything related to arts. Kannan said that there’s a need to educate people about arts and creative subjects from scratch and the next two decades will see immense growth of this industry.
Bojalwar mentioned that four-five years back it was difficult to convince parents about getting into the gaming industry, but now according to him it has become much easier. Arora had the same view as Bojalwar. In the keynote, Sahay put forward an important point on the gaming industry. He said, “Gaming is such a sector that it’s better if the government doesn’t have much involvement in it.”
Gupta commented, “Now the kids know what they want to do. Currently it’s not about getting into industry, it’s about how to get in the industry.” Arora said that considering the opportunities and demand Indian artists have, the students learning here, need to become a global artist to meet the demand.
All the panelists shared what their institutions are doing for skilling students and shared the success stories of their institutions. They all in unison shared that they are willing to provide and are providing resources for students getting in the industry which will eventually lead to the growth of M&E Industry.
