From being an entrepreneur who plunged into technology leaving aside a prospering family business in plastics, to heading one of India's leading SFX studios and SFX training institutes, Maya Entertainment Limited CEO Rajesh Turakhia has come a long way.

The versatile Turakhia seems to be a deadly combination of a rational, hardnosed, Gujrati businessman and a concerned, always on the job, CEO. In an exclusive interview with Animation 'xpress' Anand Gurnani, the MEL CEO shares his ideas and views on how the Indian animation studios need to unite and stand for each other and focus on selling Brand India!...

- Excerpts

How & when did MEL come about? Were you involved with MEL right since inception?
MEL started in 1996. It started with Ketan's (Well known film maker Ketan Mehta) need for animation and SFX which he found was not available in India, at least the kind which he wanted. The option of going abroad was too cost prohibitive. The idea was that being one of the largest entertainment industries in the world, we ought to have our own facilities for SFX and animation. That's how MEL came about.

I wasn't part of MEL at that time, though Ketan has been a friend for the past 15-20 years now. I had my own computer parts business and was one of the largest sellers for Seagate. I joined MEL in 2000 as the Vice President. Around end of 2002 Ketan got busy in his project and with his movie The Rising and that's when I became CEO.

Coming back to the time when MEL was formed, how was the scenario then?
At that time Ketan found that there wasn't enough trained manpower available. The ones which were there, were more oriented in thinking in terms of FX for commercials. The 30 second kind of thinking is different from the 30 minute thinking, the language changes, the treatment also changes. To train his people he kickstarted an in house serial called Captain Vyom which aired on DD and was quite successful. We did 5 minutes of FX every week. That provided on job training to the manpower at MEL. As is the case with any startup there were fund constraints, so he couldn't use the expensive Silicon graphics and Apple platforms which were the prevalent for FX during that time. He chose the Intel based PC which was just about getting popular in FX and seemed to be the platform for the future.

Go on..
The work was on Intel platform, Intel saw the work and was impressed. They decided to invest in the company. That's when the whole investment procedure started. In 2000 the new investment came in and we moved into this new facility. At this facility we scaled up our in house training programs and spun it into a separate entity with franchisees across the country.

We invested in high end equipment, software and infrastructure. That equipment enabled us to do movies like Jajantram Mamantram which is 63 minutes and has 1800 FX shots. Nobody in India has attempted that kind of volume of work. We delivered that in 16 months, which I think was a major achievement.

When did you begin taking on international assignments?
We were looking for international work and last year I got into active marketing when I took over as CEO. First I consolidated our local business which is VFX for films and television. Once we established that and we established ourselves WE started venturing out to get international business.

This year around March-April, we were able to bag Jack Frost and right now we are working on a total of 8 projects. We are pitching for serials also and we should get a couple of serials very shortly by next march or april. We will be doing about 300 minutes of content in the next 6 months, which I believe is quite a lot of work.

What's the team size at MEL?
The size of the CG team when we got the orders was 40, now its risen to almost 80 and again as further work is coming in we will be scaling up to 120. We won't have a problem scaling up. Even if I take 2 best students from each center of MAAC I'll have 60 people, but again they would be trainees. What we are trying to build now is a very high end core team of about 40 people and under them we can always put another 80 people as assistants and complete jobs on that basis. That's how we are structuring. Again as we are expanding we need to expand in the right way with the right sort of equipment and infrastructure.

A still from Jajantram Mamantram

"We will be doing about 300 minutes of content in the next 6 months, which I believe is quite a lot of work."

Are you ramping up your infrastructure then?
Intel being a strategic partner in MEL, their systems solutions division came in and did a study. They recommended the architecture and on their recommendations we started the new studio facility which is currently in the expansion phase. It is totally designed by Intel and we will be one of the first studios to have the new Nakona chipset that they have, we will be having more than 120 CPU's with the chipset, then we'll have blade servers and so forth. That is just phase 1. Phase 2 will be another 120 workstations and phase 3 will be another 120. Since we always have a shortage of animators, we intend to at least technically equip our infrastructure in such a way that the most can be achieved by our manpower. We want to optimize.

What about technical support for your team?
We have a total of 16 people in our tech support team, who review the hardware and software and recommend upgradation and do various benchmarking tests.

What's the ratio percentage of local and international work currently at MEL?
First it was entirely VFX and CG for TV and films in India. Then we started doing commercials which constituted 10%. Now 70 % of work is Indian work and 30% is International work. By next year it will be 70% International work in Value terms and 30% Indian work. The volume of Indian work is also going to increase, but in value terms the international work will be more.

Are you trying to reduce the Indian assignments in favor of International ones ?
We will be one company that will not give up on Indian work. We have done everything Indian, Ketan is from the Indian film industry so we will definitely grow our Indian business, we will try and start co producing serials and movies with clients where there is a large amount of animation /sfx work.

Your comments on the current Indian scenario? What about Govt participation etc.?
Lobbying is on with various bodies like APAI, CII. My viewpoint right now is that we are growing so fast that we can actually take advantage of this if all the Indian animation studios just get together. Forget about whether there is Govt. help or whether there is an organisation in place or not. If we look at India as something that we represent, rather than just our own studios and if we show a little bit more togetherness, the international people will be impressed and they will stay with us. They will stay with India, otherwise we will slowly see them trying to find an offshoring destination some place else.

They must feel comfortable coming to a country as a whole not to Maya Entertainment or to Crest or to XYZ. They should feel that India is a good place to work. You never hear them saying so and so studio in Korea is great , they say Korea is good for this and Phillipines is good for that and Japan is great for that. They dont talk about individual studios. What I am trying to emphasise is...

Brand India!
Yes. We should look at the Indian animation industry as a whole rather than only our own studios, then we can grow fabulously. There has to be a movement to portray us as a unified body, wherein if something goes wrong and a studio is about to fail on delivery, we should consider it as India failing and we should all get together and help that studio out. We have to see to it that India never fails, deadlines are always met. Let's help each other rather then fight and poach. There is a lot of business. The only problem is skilled manpower, so all studios should get into the educational mode. I think we are going through the same phase which we were in 93-94 for IT. The IT business succeeded because IT education was carried out extensively and very well.

People get nervous, because if today I can't deliver if someone has poached from me, they will be wary of giving the job to another studio because tomorrow I might poach from that studio. Stability of deliveries and stability of studios is very important.

Go on...
They are happy with people like Crest having delivered, with people like us giving them good delivery schedules. They are gradually becoming comfortable, there are 2 things that they are very concerned about. Firstly Confidentiality - their data should not be leaked out. NDA's signed will be very strict, studios have to be very strict in this matter with their staff also. The second thing is timely deliveries, if they feel that there is no contract system in place in India and that any studio can poach anytime, it will put them off.

Either there have to be contracts in place or there has to be an internal understanding that we won't do things that hurt brand India. It should be a practice to check whether it's not going to adversely effect the studio's deliveries, before you kind of go and raid from a studio. If you are internally known to each other it helps to co operate. I can never stop a person from leaving my studio, but I can definitely stop him from leaving at a critical time. At MEL we are making contracts which ensure that people cannot leave mid way during projects.

What are the clients looking out for? What is critical?
Everything. A lot of factors are involved to successfully implement a project. The management, the people, the facilities. The clients look out for a complete package. They send a test first, then they send a producer to look at the premises, they always check out 3-4 studios. They are also very particular about timely communication.

Are these trade fairs like MIPCOM helpful?
Oh yes, definitely. That's the only way to market your services in this industry. Of course you follow up and go individually to meet with clients at their studios. But Trade fairs are a good economical way to meet 10-20 potential clients at one time.

Talking about trade fairs, there's Telemart which just recently got postponed? Does India have that much to offer in animation/CG so as to merit an event?
See we still dont have that pull where we can create and attract international participation of high level, so we have to create an event which actually brings international participation over here. That makes it economical for the smaller companies who cannot afford to travel abroad to show their stuff. That will also improve the image of India. Because every time when you go to Mipcom and there are the same 10-12 companies, the perception grows that India consists of only these many companies. Luckily nowadays there is an additional face everytime you go to Mipcom with so many new players coming in. We must have an international event here in India. Like Anigraph was a step in that direction, Frames is now concentrating more on animation now, so if we can do something that attracts international clients it would be great. If we cant hold an event within our industry how large can we really be?

Any HR initiatives that you take to make people comfortable?
The only thing I can say is each studio has to approach this subject in their own way and make the environment such that the people dont want to leave.

What about IP?
That is always on.

Anything that is ready?
No. In fact we were toying with the idea based on an animated Captain Vyom serial, which we had made 7 minutes of, now slowly that Maya is getting known we can actually look at partners to take that forward.

You would require that many more animators?
That we will manage, it can be a fall back project for us. In case of a slack in the international market, we can start creating our own content.

Lets talk about your institute MAAC now. What approach have you taken in structuring your courses at MAAC?
Let me start with how MAAC came about. When Intel invested in our company in the year 2000 we started expanding our animation seats. We were looking for people, the only way we could find people was by poaching from the other studios, and there were very few trained personnel available in the market so we started an in house training program, whenever we got anyone in from some other studio or institute we needed to further train them before they became industry ready.

When I saw the training program, I felt it had the potential to be taken nationwide. There is raw talent all over the country. Not everyone can come to Mumbai where we can interview and pick and choose. We thought, let them enroll themselves at centres near their home towns, let them start getting trained there and then we shall choose and pick the best and get them across to Mumbai, not only for us but for the entire industry.

So we kept MAAC clinically separate from the studio. We wanted the students to have the choice of joining wherever they wished , rather than restricting them to MEL. We were out to impart training which would be industry acceptable standards not only MEL acceptable .We sat down with the production head of our animation division and asked him to chalk out a course that would be required of an animator.
he listed a few essentials software capabilities that he looked for in trainees that made him comfortable enough so as to delegate some work to them. We incorporated those suggestions and came up with the course.

We took that course nationwide. The reason why we are only 30 strong (franchisees) today, we could have been 100 or 200 is that...

A still from a class project at MAAC

"All animation studios should get into the educational mode. The IT business succeeded in India because IT education was carried out extensively and very well."

30 is also a big number
Not when you compare it to some institutes that have 200+franchisees.

People always ask me why only 30 when you are such a big brand. The fact is that at all points of time the restriction was always faculty. We wanted faculty to be industry oriented faculty, who knew what they were talking about and a faculty that could bring with them the required level of expertise needed to teach. That slowed our growth, when a batch of trained faculty is ready, we launch newer centres. I dont think that at any point of time we will go above 50 centres.I think 50 caters suitably to all the major territories.

We have centres across 14 cities, the metros have 5-6 centres while the smaller ones have a centre each. We consciously close down centres that dont perform. But we see to it that no one, ie the franchisee or the students enrolled there, suffers a loss. It's a franchise evaluation system we have set in place that determines the viability of the location.

How do u go about looking for a franchisee?
We were not into the marketing of this product as in getting franchisees. The monetary aspect was a secondary aspect in this business for us. The primary objective was to get talent which was located in the various cities and towns, to join our course, and to pick and choose the best amongst them and get them to Mumbai.

We always helped our franchisees to nurture the students, and took special care to nurture our franchisee's businesses rather than take away money from them at the initial stage or ask them to market very aggresively, make them invest and then maybe fail , maybe succeed.

We wanted to succeed in getting animators into the animation industry. Money follows. Our courses are designed by industry professionals and are always up to date and upto industry requirements. We found that a lot of institutes were training students on old versions of software even as newer ones hit markets every 6 months.

What measures do you adopt to see to it that your courseware is up to date?
If there is an 18 month course at MAAC and if during the course of training, a newer version of the software being taught is released, we make sure that we teach the latest version to our students before they go out.

Instead of printing our books in large volumes, we shell out a higher cost per course kit and print in hundreds as we are constantly reinventing our course material. It would'nt be possible to dispose of old material if printed in large volumes.

Our studio background is a great advantage we have. There's a lot of international experts who visit our production facilities to collaborate on assignments, we make them interact with our students at MAAC. We've done workshops with Samir Hoon, Frank Foster, Bink Cadman. Such interaction broadens our students vision in terms of what the market is all about.

What problems have you faced at MAAC?
One thing I have been constantly fighting is the perception that parents have, they still think it is cartooning, it is not serious business. Animation has become a serious business and a serious career option. We try to bring these experts and achievers to make the parents and students understand that animation is a serious career option and fabulous money can be made out of it.

Looking back, do you think you have achieved with MAAC whatever you had set out to do?
We had 2 goals when we started MAAC, to provide promising students with excellent training facilities and for our students to be accepted by the industry, by that I mean our students being placed in all the big animation studios in India and not only MEL. And the studios are happy with our students, they tell us that, "Your students are different from those of other institutes". I am happy to say that the goals have been met with. We are very concerned about the success of our franchisees too, they have invested their time, effort and money. By keeping the number of our centres low, the turnover per centre today is much higher than other institutes.

We have 8-10 students per batch. We have completed training more than 3000 students in the past 3 years and this year alone we have 3000 students. We have the maximum number of certified centres by Discreet, and also the maximum number of tutors certified by Discreet.

How do you decide on the software that is taught at MAAC? There seems to be a preference for Discreet & Adobe?
What happens is, today internationally most projects are done in 3D studio Max or Maya, the third demand would be for Softimage and that's it. If you want a person to get a job you have to give him things that are in demand in the market, so I can go around town saying that I want to create very high end animators and i want to teach them Houdini and stuff, but that will only waste our student's time and money.

People should get into and out of our course and at the end of the course they should be able to get a career. If they dont get that than I fail in my goal, I would rather make those other courses as specialised courses which they have to enroll for if they so desire. Basic course makes him/her a basic animator, gives him a basic job, if a student cant get into animation, he/she might just get into architectural walkthroughs or other related fields. We have designed the course considering all these things.

Additionally we organise workshops on film making, direction, lighting, script writing, story boarding, acting for animation - expressions in animation and walk cycles in animation. We are also coming up with longer courses now, since we are getting students wanting to join from junior college levels.

Also you must remember one thing, that even if someone comes out of an IIT or an IIM, the student does'nt immediately start as a leader, the freshers are first taken in at trainee levels and then depending upon the capability and competence levels displayed they move further up.

If you compare our students with other institutes' though, our students have a higher level of confidence. There are MAAC students who joined 3 years ago and are today drawing Rs 50,000 as salary in other studios and some are doing so out here at MEL as well.

You mentioned that MAAC is not targeting more than 50 franchises. What is the reason for that?
By the time we get to 50, we will have covered major centers, and people who are interested would travel a little bit to come to an institute with better facilities. Say for eg students from Kolhapur and Solapur would come to Pune.

Do you have hostel arrangements for students?
No we dont have hostel arrangements but we can guide them to PG arrangements that other students have already taken. Most students always have a relative living near by or some arrangement of their own. Hostel kind of facility is something we are planning for in the future, where there will be a varsity with a hostel inhouse . We trying to tie - up with an international school for that kind of course.

When does that start?
We plan to start that within a years time. If we do tie up with an international partner, our course would be curricular oriented and we would have to start when the academic year commences, right now we are flexible we start a batch whenever there is a full batch.

Where would that be?
In Mumbai. It will be a major investment - 100 room hostel, varsity building equipment etc. We are talking to all the top universities in the world and eventually we will tie up with someone who seems to be a natural partner. We don't want a big brother, we want a partner.

Any final comments... on future of the Indian animation industry... on things we ought to try out?
The business is going to increase almost double every year for all of us. We just have to concentrate on quality and timely deliveries. The business will not go anywhere else, it is coming here and there is no doubt about it. We have to grow internally, we have to keep on training more people, each studio should along with its animation operations, constantly invest efforts and time in training more people so that the pool of good animators becomes much larger than what it is and we can draw from it at will. We are already fighting international competition, we are fighting with deadlines, it's a new business for us, we are learning everyday from our mistakes, we dont want to be worried about watching our back too!