Bangalore
We launched in 2016 with Sitara Menon running our first company outside of the UK. It’s been a steep learning curve, initially trying to replicate what we do in London, then pivoting into other production services and utilising cloud apps that flourished during the pandemic. India has a huge entertainment industry, Bollywood in the mainstream, and massive celebrity influencer culture with gargantuan followings. But the world of corporate content creation and brand comms has been harder to navigate. It varies wildly in quality and price points and that’s despite the fact that all of that technical skills we need are available in abundance. It’s no coincidence that the big visual effects houses, Framestore, Moving Picture Company, have significant operations in India.
When most people think of Indian cities, the chaos and colour of Mumbai and New Delhi spring to mind. But Bangalore where we’re based, is the country’s vibrant tech hub, home to over 67,000 tech firms and the Indian headquarters of Cisco, Infosys and WiPro. In our first WeWork office, the number of VC funded start-ups was striking, you could feel the ambition and entrepreneurship. But aside from that, Bangalore is the capital of the beautiful Karnataka state, known for its wildlife and magical hill stations.
So when we shoot in India, it’s always a privilege. Some of our footage is up there with that which we’re most proud of. Have a look at this film we made for Unilever last year on a tea plantation in Assam up in the country’s north east. A female empowerment project that gives tea pickers equal rights to their male colleagues – a huge leap forward for a very rural part of the country.
Watch it here: Women’s Accelerator Fund
We have also been able to white label our services for other companies in the Televisual rankings like Casual Films and Plastic Pictures. The Modi government has been less than sympathetic to filmmakers than previous administrations and we’ve had more than few calls from worried Heads of Production, who have been denied visas for their crews. Now, more than ever, the need to fly big crews in and out is less important. And our lead producer, Nivedith Alva has brilliant DoPs to call on with National Geographic and commercial credits.
But the way we’re able to leverage our Indian business on a more day to day basis is with 2D animation. It’s a part of our offering that we are outsourcing more and more to our partners in Bangalore. The skills are there as is the ability scale up, knowing that the lead times for many of our projects are getting shorter. For this we utilise platforms like Lucid Link, which essentially allows us to do our work in the cloud, enabling the CD and the animation team to pass projects between India and our other studios.
The other big draw of Bangalore as a production hub is the brilliant new airport which allows us to reach other cities in South East Asia directly – Kuala Lumpur, Singapore, and Bangkok, all a short, inexpensive flight away.
So if anyone is planning a project in India or needs some advice on how to get productions made on the subcontinent, Sitara is ready to take your call.
