Color Chips makes Rs 10cr expansion plans

Hyderabad-based Color Chips India Limited (CCIL), an integrated design solutions company focused on graphics and animations, plans to invest Rs 10 crore for building infrastructure to start in-house production in the next 12 months.

Addressing a press conference, Sudhish S Rambhotla, chairman and managing director of Color Chips India Limited, said: "The company till now was into co-production along with various companies. In the next two years we want to start our own production and to meet the requirements of the production facilities we would be investing Rs 10 crore, raised through debt and equity for the expansion."

CCIL has intellectual property rights (IPRs) for 200 characters. "We are planning our in-house production with these characters," Rambhotla said.

The company, which has 350 employees, plans to increase its manpower to around 1,000 in the next two years to meet the demand from the increase in the number of projects.

CCIL, which has just finished a 13-episode animated serial for the French production house, Benj Productions, is at present working on a 26-episode animated serial for a German production house, BKN Kids. CCIL expects the turnover to cross Rs 15 crore during the financial year 2004-05 from Rs 6 crore earned during the previous financial year.

CCIL is also introducing a production-based animation-training programme.

"We used to train people and absorb them into our company but according to industry sources around three lakh employees are required in this field by 2008 and that is why we are introducing this programme at our CAT centre (training division of Color Chips)," he said.

"Depending on the type of response that we get from this programme we would also be expanding our operations to the other parts of the country," he added.

The company also plans to introduce a training programme for school children called CAPS (Color Chips Animation Programme in Schools) in association with Camlin.

"We also propose to expand our training divisions across the state and the country by inviting training partners from various state. These at a later stage would be converted to satellite production centres for the company's productions," Rambhotla said.

The training methodology involves real-time production environment. The curriculum also involves real-time production environment.

"Faculty from India and abroad will be invited to give guest lectures with theoretical and practical orientation programmes," Rambhotla said.