Hyderabad: In a virtual boost for Hyderabad’s prospects as a global animation and visual effects hub, US-based visual effects and immersive experiences biggie Digital Domain unveiled its fifth global studio and first India facility at Hyderabad’s IT district on Monday.
The 42,000 sft facility has been set up at an investment of around $5 million at Hyderabad’s IT/ITeS special economic zone that also houses the likes of Apple, Microsoft, Facebook and Google. The facility will focus on the features business as well as short films.
The studio, which currently houses around 205 people, will be operational at full capacity of 500 people by mid 2018 and will be Digital Domain’s second largest studio after the one at Vancouver that has a headcount of 500, Digital Domain executive director and Group COO Amit Chopra told mediapersons here. Globally, Digital Domain has a headcount of around 1400.
“India is, and will continue to be, an integral part of Digital Domain’s global expansion plans as we forsee the region to be a leading consumer of premium content. The Hyderabad studio has been built to be the number two facility after Vancouver. This (Hyderabad) is not going to be just a backend facility. It will be closely integrated with our creative HQ in LA. We want to build content for the local and global markets here,” said Chopra.
The Los Angeles headquartered player, which has worked on Hollywood blockbusters such as Titanic, The Curious Case of Benjamin Button, The Beauty and the Beast, Spiderman- Homecoming as well as the Tron and The Fast and the Furious franchises, among others, was initially eyeing a presence in Mumbai but eventually zoomed in on Hyderabad thanks to its ideal ecosystem.
“We have been looking at India since 2013 and were very close to locking in Mumbai but felt it was too saturated. Chennai was also too big already. We found Hyderabad offers a better overall environment — less traffic congestion, good local availability of skillsets (with many people from here working in the industry at Chennai and Mumbai), lower operating costs and a very industry friendly government. Also there are a lot of good VFX films like Bahubali being made out of Hyderabad,” Chopra explained.
