Picasso Digital to invest $9mn

Delhi-based Picasso Digital Media Private Limited, a two-year-old company promoted by the Maharishi Group, proposes to invest around Rs $9 million (approximately Rs 36 crore) in animation education and production over the next five years.

Disclosing this at a press conference here on Monday, ABRP Reddy, managing director and chief executive of Picasso Digital, said the company had envisaged building capacity of 1,000 students at its soon-to-be-launched animation college in Hyderabad by the end of 2008.

"Besides, a campus with a student intake of 250 in Visakhapatnam and an animation production unit in Hyderabad have been planned, which would be up and running by the year end and by 2008 respectively," he added.

Picasso Digital, in which the Maharishi Group holds an 80 per cent equity, is set to formally launch South India's first animation college in Hyderabad in collaboration with Canada-based Centennial College on July 4. The campus will have a capacity to house 200 students per year. Picasso currently has one animation college campus in Delhi with an intake of 250 students per year.

The company has so far invested Rs 2 crore in the Hyderabad campus. It will focus on in-house requirements from its business associates and outsourcing production contracts in the first phase. In the next phase, it will focus on developing intellectual property.

"Our idea is to source 30 to 40 per cent of our manpower requirement from the pass outs of our Delhi and Hyderabad colleges. We also plan to bid for international projects," Reddy said.

The Hyderabad campus will offer a three-year full-time integrated BSc programme in animation film making and STAR (Strategic Talent for Animation Revolution), an 18-month part-time programme.

Affiliated to the Punjab Technical University, the full-time programme will offer an international certification from the Centennial College besides a UGC degree.

The part-time programme will be six days a week and three hours per day. The fee structure for full-time programme is Rs 5.5 lakh while it is Rs 1.8 lakh for the part-time course.

A three-month studio internship or live animation project too will be offered towards the end of the programmes.