Hasta La Motion!

Nina Elavia Jaipuria the EVP and business head for kids cluster at Nickelodeon India is bullish about the kids’ genre despite the challenges that exist.

Speaking to AnimationXpress.com’s Sidharth Iyer, Jaipuria opens up on what she feels of the Indian animation space, creation of local IPs, benefits of owning IPs and the future of the industry at large in a heart to heart conversation.

Excerpts:-

What are your views on the Indian animation industry?

I think the Indian animation space has really come off age and the industry is more open to exploring the possibilities of creating newer and fresher content and producing own intellectual properties (IPs). India was always looked at as an outsourcing model, where animation studios from abroad would just use our technical expertise in getting work done on their IPs, but now slowly things have evolved and the Indian companies have understood that it’s more important to create IPs as it opens a whole new realm to explore and monetise in the future.

The most important thing that we need to keep in mind is that the content needs to be very engaging. Storytelling plays a very important role to grab the attention of children and in turn they need to connect with the characters in the story; that is what we want from the perspective of the broadcaster.

India has a great talent pool and we are very much capable of making animation of international standards, the only thing which I believe we are lagging behind is in the churn of great and engaging content. So, once we have a bank of stories and endearing characters to engage with kids that is the time when Indian animation will flourish.

Do you feel localisation of IPs is the way forward?

If we look at the kids’ genre in the Indian television space, most of the programming catalogue revolves around comedy and humour. The only issue with this kind of genre in the space is the freshness of the content and how much one can really do with the element of laughter, but at the same time not make it very slapstick.

As a broadcaster if we own our own IPs, it certainly helps in the long run as it allows us to create an ecosystem around it along with opportunities of ancillary revenues coming through as well. From Nickelodeon’s perspective, it has certainly helped us not only in generating revenues but also taking our IPs to foreign markets. ‘Pakdam Pakdai’ for instance has travelled to nearly seven countries under the namesake ‘Rat-A-Tat’ and has been really successful in those markets as well.

Also just to highlight how proud we are of our IPs, ‘Motu Patlu’ was recently named the third most popular character only after ‘Chhota Bheem’ and ‘Doraemon’ in the Ormax Small Wonders study conducted in April and October every year for the age group of 6-14 years. And we also have ‘Ninja Hattori’ at number four, so we are very well placed in the kids’ space. But, certainly the need of the hour is to come up with more original IPs and we are certainly looking at it seriously.

How have the original IPs been performing for the channel?

Both ‘Motu Patlu’ and ‘Pakdam Pakdai’ have really been doing well for us, not only in terms of ratings but also pulling in more brands on board for the channel, as we all are in the business to not only entertain but also remain profitable; we can’t be running a loss making venture at the end of the day.

In terms of the ratings, ‘Motu Patlu’ contributes to nearly 30-40 per cent of our GVTs and even a younger show like ‘Pakdam Pakdai’ is giving us about 10-15 per cent, which is a great sign for us. So definitely we are proud of our properties and would really want to focus more on coming up with more engaging content for our kiddies.

How has the association been with Indian animation studios?   

We are really pleased to have associated with two of the leading studios in the country for both our IPs; Maya Digital Studios for ‘Motu Patlu’ and Toonz Animation for ‘Pakdam Pakdai’. I believe we have really done well to help each other mutually in not only creating some wonderful work but also keenly looking at improving the standard of the animation and raising the bar in terms of the kind of animation that you get to see on Indian television.

With Toonz Animation we also benefited with them helping us taking the ‘Pakdam Pakdai’ series to the foreign market and also working on the sensibilities and keeping the foreign audience in mind while coming up with fresher content. At the end of the day it’s a chase show and there is only that much can be done in terms of the storytelling aspect.

I feel the other studios are certainly doing a good job in the space as well, and I am certain when the time is right and if the return on investment is on a higher end we will certainly look at associating with more and more studios.

Finally, do you think India can be the next animation powerhouse?   

We are certainly on the right track, and we were already on the global map. But, now it’s more about creating our own IPs and really pushing the envelope in bringing out innovative content and endearing characters. We at Nickelodeon continuously carry out a need and gap analysis to really understand what’s lacking in this space and what is required to fill those voids.

The most popular genre in the kids’ space is comedy and action/adventure; we have a great slate for both these genres and are certain that we will only be growing from strength to strength and help in growing the industry.