My word, it’s cold after 35 degrees! A bit of a shock to the system, but once the washing has been done, the gifts distributed, the body clock back to normal, what has it meant?

In order to make a little sense, I have been thinking along the lines of a SWOT analysis (Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, Threats) of the Mumbai facilities sector. Big caveat on all of this; it is only the humble opinion of this commentator, after only a week in India. But…

Strengths

• There is a skilled, educated and talented workforce out there.
• The cost of wages are much less, allowing for much bigger studios.
• The workforce seems hungry, and willing to work 24/7.
• The kit is as good as any we have in the UK.
• There is a huge film market and a growing animation one.
• There is a large domestic (and Indian-born, international) audience – last month saw over 8 million new mobile phone handsets bought in India.
• There are already strong links between India and the US, the far east and Australasia.
• There are a large number of companies that seem to have deep pockets and cash to spend
• Timezone – this one has been puzzling me – as London has a time zone advantage for the US/Far East money market, is there an equivalent for Mumbai and Europe / Australasia in post production work?

Weaknesses

• There is very little professional training given, or even available. Even the crème de la crème here (Whistling Woods) will only produce cohorts of 12 for each discipline – and when we look at the size of the industry this simply is not enough.
• The standard of project management is very low.
• There is little connectivity between facilities, with a lot of material still physically transported – which apart from the time scales raises significant security issues.
• Parts of the industry still seem quite evolutionarily juvenile – with resulting consolidation, merging, and a lack of stability.
• It takes time to build the relationships in order to make good any collaboration/joint venture.
• Complex and confusing tax and intellectual property structures.
• There is no accurate picture of the size and scale of the media industry in India, making investment choices particularly hard to gauge
• Whilst labour costs may be low, space is not – a two-bedroom apartment in the posh parts of Mumbai (and where a number of facilities are based) is reputed to be in the millions (pounds, not rupees!)
• Working practices border on immoral

Opportunities

• New markets – mobile, gaming, re-purposing of content – all of this seems not yet to be easily available to the Indian media industry.
• supply of low cost work, such as restoration or some fx work
• provision of work flow/project management and key talent
• training, both pre/new-entrant and continual professional development
• We can provide a “grand entrance” to the world (i.e. an Indian company purchasing a London one)
• Connectivity
• With a growing number of Indian productions being filmed in the UK, the provision of seamless UK and Indian post services

Threats

• Too late? Has the bubble burst? There are already a number of international companies and individuals working in Mumbai.
• In many respects the Indian sector doesn’t need us – and I have seen many companies simply wanting to pitch for work.
• IP protection is minimal at best – with court cases taking over 10 years to decide.
• India seems to look to the US more than the UK – it is Harvard rather than Oxbridge that the elite send their sons and daughters to.
• It was hard to see how meritocratic India is, which means not always having the best person for the job
• Middle management is pretty rife here
• Will the massive conglomerates of India simply buy up the UK post industry?

I am sure I will add to this list as I go through my notes, remember the contacts met, the presentations given and the conversations had. Mumbai is not an easy opportunity for “outsourcing”. Any profitable work will be collaborative and done in partnership. And is just as likely to be India using the UK as us using them.

My last full day in Mumbai, the day is one to catch up and reflect and try to make sense of what Mumbai and the UK can do together. There are opportunities, but also problems:-

• Prime Focus, a major player here has already purchased a London facility. Another deal seems to be nearing completion, rumours abound of a major Indian company looking for a purchase in Soho. We have heard how a lot of these massive corporations look for “trophies” to demonstrate wealth and power – perhaps a Soho facility would give the required cache.
• Work can be done here, from call centres to Business Process Outsourcing. Animation and VFX work has been done here (one VFX house has 600 seats, another 450!), but there are still some concerns over the quality. This is not, though, a one-way street – the US, Far East and Australia seem to be benefiting from effects work from Bollywood – but not so much in the UK.
• Film is the dominant force. The star system, the producers, the tie-ins, these are key to the ecology of the entertainment industry. The Film London Tournament has however demonstrated that the industry here is keen to learn new ways of working, and sell itself to the world as a film making talent.
• The sheer number of people combined with the low wage costs means that it is a very different market model – even a different workflow model. The animators work 12 plus hours a day for 6 days a week. We have seen elaborate event staging go up in the hotel overnight, only to be gone the next day. The film makers I have met talk of armies of people creating the sets – but all of this seems to happen at the last moment. I hear of a lack of project management skills, or even really an understanding of it.
• The infrastructure needs to change. From the roads (getting anywhere in this massive city on time is much more a case of hope than judgement) to technology (no secure connections). One colleague spent 6 hours on a flight from Delhi – a trip that should have taken less than three.
• There are talented and skilled people here, but I am still not sure how they are found. The lack of work laws mean that costs are super low, however it sits uneasily in an increasingly mindful world economy – what company wants to be branded in the UK as one which exploits the workforce? Training is ad hoc at best, with very little provision for new entrant or even workforce development.
• The industry seems fragmented and unclear as to where it is heading. Little if no credible data seems to exist on the wider size and growth of the audio visual industry in terms of workforce, with little common voice to counter the major obstacles, not strategic vision to ensure the industry continues to grow.
• There are some seriously wealthy companies here, with massive reserves of cash. Companies such as Percept and Reliance have already invested in the media industry here and abroad. Deep pockets can soon cause great threats to the UK market.

More visits today; this is not a Soho model of wowing the customer. That is, all except Pixion, which has all the baubles to compete with the best of Dean Street.

As the day comes to a close, many of us feel that after 6 days, we have only really just begun to understand this place. We have been exposed to an industry dominated by film, but there is a thriving TV and Advertising sector here too – I realise that I haven’t been to visit one of the broadcasters. We have focused on Mumbai, but other regions have just as important an industry. Chennai and Delhi would be necessary additions to gain an accurate overview. Others in the group can see the value for a future trip, and are starting to plan a strategy for it.

Our last meal together also highlights another positive for the trip. As Simon (Evolutions) puts it, we have all come away with a deeper understanding of our own sector, as well as some fantastic new friends.

Today is the day of the signing of the Film Treaty between London and Mumbai. At the Whistling Woods Film School, actor Amitabh Bachchan (who may be unknown to us but is one of the most famous people in the world, with more people seeing him on screen than any other) joined our “Honourable Mayor” Mr. Livingstone for the signing. Also there was Adrian Wootton, CEO of Film London, his chair Sandy Lieberson and Ronnie Screwvala, president of the Film and Television Guild of India.

Ken thinks of India as one of the most strategic partners we should have. The statistics highlight the importance. In 2020 it will not be the G8, it will be India, USA and China making up the G3. London is home to more Indian-born nationals than any other city in the world. India could gaurantee that any future Mayor of London would visit at least once a term – that was the importance that India is held. With regards to filming, there were over 40 Indian productions filmed in London last year. One of these, Jhoom Barabar Jhoom, was one of the first Bollywood films to be set primarily in London. The production used over 1100 extras and 400 dancers, including many Londoners, and key locations such as Tower Bridge and Kensington Palace Gardens to create a number of major set pieces. Filming at Waterloo saw Amitabh Bachchan take centre stage in the middle of the station’s concourse accompanied by a troupe of dancers. My conversations with the Indian film makers we have met confirmed that they felt that London was a far, far easier place to film.

Another set of startling facts came from a conversation I had with the Deputy British High Commission. We spoke about the slums here in Mumbai – an estimated 50% of the population of the city live in slums. But these are not disorganised or chaotic; most residents have a vote so politicians here have to woo them as much as the wealthy elite. 3 – 400,000 new people arrive in the City from the countryside every year. The largest slum has 1 million residents, and is one of the “green lungs” of the city – here everything that the city throws away is recycled; from the little ends of soap that we throw away in our hotels (boiled down and made into new soap) to the millions of water bottles discarded. A recent report put the economic benefit to the city in the £100,000’s, and if the slum was cleared not only would the city need to find new homes, it would either have to create the most sophisticated recycling system ever known, or find massive land fill to get rid of the waste.

I chatted to one of the heads of faculty at Whistling Woods, and this country also has a surplus of engineers. There may be an opportunity to source the missing technologists that the UK audio visual industry needs from here – more thought and research to do when I return.

That evening we were invited to the Hanuman Returns launch. More views are revealed of this place. The first Hanuman was a massively succesful animation film, and we are told a true rival to Hollywood superheroes. The sequal is to be even bigger, and we meet the corporate partners – with the product manufacturer (over 200 product lines), a mobile phone game to download and even the jewellery maker (diamond pendant tie-ins!) given top billing. But the ambitions of this film are global we are told, which sits a little at odds with a lead character whose immediate super powers seems be acheiveing a face rash, a film who’s audience needs to be conversant with the epic Ramayana, and a less than up-to-date animation style. Nevertheless, the show is fantastic, with actors playing all the (four armed, four headed!) characters from the show.

I leave the rest of the chaps to watch the football, and head to bed. I am now trying to make sense of everything we have seen and heard, and no doubt as a consequence, have a restless night.

I am starting to feel the pace now – long days with our evenings filled with fantastic food have been fabulous fun but tiring. So today was supposed to be a light day of visiting Prime Focus in the morning, then I was to head up to the newest and probably largest training facility here, Whistling Woods.

As with everything here, things do not come to plan. The cars are late. One driver has little fuel left and does not know the way, so even though we leave 3/4 of an hour before the other car, they beat us by 3/4 of an hour to Film City.

This is a very large part of the countryside, it feels almost like a game reserve, with armed guards at the gate, walls all around, and over 20 sound stages making the 1000+ Bollywood films a year. I arrive at the Whistling Woods compound – very impressive it looks too. I am given a tour; a large, well appointed auditorium with digital projection and dolby surround sound; a smaller, but equally well appointed auditorium, rehearsal space, two tv studios, animation teaching spaces with lightboxes, tv and audio training rooms with all the kit you would expect to see – all in all very impressive.

Whistling Woods is only 18 months old and was built with private investment. They have a large plot and plan to expand (a large building with 3 studio spaces and more animation and vfx rooms are planned, along with R&D space and residential areas). They limit the class space to twelve students in 8 different disciplines, though all students are recquired to understand all of the creative and technical process. And the depth of learning seems very good – for example in the first term the budding animators are all working in pencil and watercolour – life drawing classes are essential. All students get placements work experience during their holidays, with around 25% of them coming from outside India, from Australia, Germany, US, Lebanon. It costs around £4 -6,000 per year, with bursaries and scholarships available.

Mr Ravi Gupta, the director, and myself chat about how we can work together. The Skillset Screen Academies and the soon to come Media Academies would be the first choice in any partnership. We share a lot of the same issues – educating more people about the career choices available to them in media; instilling a professionalism into the sector; ensuring that continual professional development keeps the workforce skilled are just some of the areas we discuss.

As I head back into town I ponder what the links could look like between our industries, between London and Mumbai, between the UK and India. There is an opportunity for two-way exchange in talent (One area that Whistling Woods are keen to explore is an training agency like Soho Editors to work in partnership to offer short, industry focused training courses, and I am beginning to see a source of competent, engineering specialist for the audio visual industry. Management keeps being an issue in India as much as in the UK. But I think one key area is in that of research and strategy – there is no common voice here, as far as I can tell no easy way to see the numbers on the industry and therefore an un-coordinated approach to helping it grow.

Much of the population of India believe in fate, in sychronicity of events. Andrew Sunnocks sits next to a DJ from the UK on the plane, John “OO” Flemming. He is playing a series of events here in India, including one in Mumbai. Tonight he puts our party on the guest list for the gig he is doing at Poison. A few of us head down to a lovely little club, which soon fills with the guests to what must be the hottest ticket in town. As we drink our VIP drinks, we meet a really nice guy, Shailendra Singh, who turns out to be the Managing Director of one of the largest companies in India. He invites us to the launch of their new animation film, Hanuman Returns, tomorrow night, a launch which throws another perspective on this sub-continent. But that, dear readers, is for another day.