In a bid to leverage the great talent pool of visual effects artists native to the city, US-based VFX company BOT VFX is all set to officially open an office in Pune in the month of January.
BOT has already onboarded artists based out of Pune who have been working remotely for the last 10 months. The new office will accommodate these existing employees and new joinees as BOT begins its recruitment efforts in Pune. “Pune is a vibrant city with great infrastructure, and many trained artists are ready to join the BOT family, so expanding our footprint there seemed to be a very natural step for us. This is yet another confirmation that we are truly a global company, with not only global clients, but talent across many cities including Chennai, Coimbatore, Atlanta, Los Angeles, New York, and now Pune,” notes BOT co-founder & MD India operations Sreyans Bardia.
Catering to clients in North America, Europe, Australia and Asia, the company offers visual effects services to larger VFX facilities, production houses, and post-production facilities on feature film, episodic, advertising and special venue projects. The services range from compositing, CG asset development and rotomation to rotoscopy, prep/paint, and match-move. BOT has been in existence for over 13 years and has a team strength of over 550 people.
While some companies rely heavily on artists working from home in other cities, BOT believes that there are overwhelming advantages of having office space to have meaningful collaboration, reliable infrastructure and adherence to the security expectations of our clients. “Operating during the pandemic has reminded us of two things about the importance of having a physical office: it is essential to the collaborative nature of the visual effects work we do, and it is essential for people to have a sense of belonging to an organisation. Our culture has always been a key part of our DNA,” observes BOT founder and CEO Hitesh Shah.
Adding perspective on the role of technology, BOT head of strategic growth Sukumar Sreenivas notes, “The current technology has simplified what used to be complex operational factors in integrating the workflows of multiple office locations. Now we can have both: office footprint in multiple geographies and a tightly knit pipeline.”
With content pipelines witnessing a steady flow, the VFX engine is chugging thunderously with various international studios setting up bricks and mortar in multiple states in India to ramp up the post-production work to meet the booming demand.
