HYDERABAD: Andhra Pradesh principal secretary, Information Technology, K. Ratna Prabha said the Government would take steps to expedite setting up of an animation academy to groom the talent.

She was speaking at Animation India 2006 here on Thursday. She said that the Government had already initiated measures like providing optic fibre connectivity to 22,000 villages for enabling them to utilise the broadband facility.

Thanks to the boom in the mobile and broadband markets, animation and gaming segments are all set to register a compounded annual growth rate of 35 per cent and 78 per cent respectively to reach to $ 950 million and $ 300 million by 2009, marking a 10-fold increase in the segment, according to National Association of Software and Services Companies (Nasscom) president Kiran Karnik.

The business in the two emerging sectors is presently pegged at $ 30 million and $285 million respectively. The animation industry is projected to grow at 8 per cent and is estimated to touch $ 75 billion by 2009. About 40 to 45 per cent of the market share is expected to go towards development costs.

According to a Nasscom report, the rapid growth of mobile telephony, increase in personal computers and greater use of animation content are set to fuel the growth of the domestic market.

Specialised training

Mr. Karnik said that animation and gaming unlike other IT-enabled services were, however, extremely investment-intensive and needed specialised training.

Large companies like Sony Entertainment, Time Warner and Virgin were looking at India both as a market as well as a resource base of technology partnerships. The necessary infrastructure was needed to be put in place to achieve the requirement of about 30,000 professionals by 2009.

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