Rosemary Arackaparambil
MUMBAI: Indian animation and special effects firm, Crest Communications Ltd.
has its eyes set on exports, expecting nearly 70 per cent of its revenue from
overseas markets in two to three years, a senior official said.
Crest, which has mainly made commercials for Indian television, is pitching
to provide animation production services for overseas studios, besides
developing its own content for export, senior vice-president International
Business A K Madhavan, told Reuters over the weekend.
"Last year, our revenues were completely from India. This year there
will be some earnings from overseas," he said. "But the next couple of
years will see a big change. The revenue model will be 70 percent from exports
and 30 percent from India," he said in an interview at Crest House, where
fun-animation characters are created.
The three-storey structure lodged in drab industrial surroundings in central
Mumbai, houses high-tech animation computers and some 70 animators including
students of arts, engineering and some talented college dropouts. Founded 10
years ago by Shyam Ramanna - son of Indian nuclear scientist Raja Ramanna -
Crest has made more than 2,000 television commercials so far, mostly featuring
special effects and animation.
Shyam Ramanna, well known in the ad world for his technical wizardry, shot
into the limelight for his technique of morphing which he developed 10 years ago
and used in a commercial showing a cheetah turning into a motorcycle, Madhavan
said.
Source of export revenue
Studios in the West typically do the pre-production work of story concept,
script writing, character designing and voice tracks. They then outsource the
actual production - the arduous work of drawing, coloring and composing images -
to Asian studios.
India is a recent entrant in the animation scene but demand for its
production services is growing. "There are today at least 20 Hollywood
studios waiting to download work to Crest," Madhavan said.
The company has invested nearly $12 million in animation infrastructure over
the past four years and could gain from this increased outsourcing as it is
among India's few but good animation houses. Others include Pentamedia Graphics,
UTV Toons, Padmalaya Telefilms and Toonz Animation India.
"I would say the year ended March 2003-4 is when we will see big dollar
money kicking in," Madhavan said. It made a net profit of Rs 50 million
($1.06 million) on revenue of Rs 240 million in the year ended March 2001. Crest
also aims to make its own content for the overseas market together with US
subsidiary Rich-Crest, formed by its acquisition of Rich Animation Studios last
year, he said.
Madhavan expects a boost from a 3D computer-generated imaging film being made
together with Rich-Crest. Crest is in talks with Columbia TriStar to either
co-produce or distribute the 90-minute film, he said. Columbia's decision is
likely to be known by the end of the month.
Tentatively called "Automation", the project is in the genre of
films like "Toy Story", and is about robots in a car factory coming
alive after its human workers have left. "The budget for the film is almost
$30 million, but inclusive of promotions and advertising, the total budget is
about $50 million," Madhavan said.
Plans for domestic market
Crest, which made some serials for domestic television last year, plans to
build on its production skills for the television market, including making
interactive game shows, Madhavan said.
"Apart from television commercials and post-production services, we are
building TV serials and getting into the feature film market. We plan to make
four budget films in the Rs 30 to 50 million range every year and one big-budget
film every two years".
In the pipeline is an Rs 330-million, live-action-cum-animated feature film
in the Hindi and Tamil languages, written by Indian poet and scriptwriter Javed
Akhtar. It is slated for release in another two years. The country's largest
term lender, the Industrial Development Bank of India (IDBI), is lending Rs 165
million, to the project as part of its foray into film financing.
(C) Reuters Limited 2001.