Canada will be signing a film and new media co-production treaty with India at the 12th edition of the International Indian Film Academy Awards (IIFA) scheduled to be held in Toronto in 2011. This will help Indian filmmakers get access to the North American country’s scenic locales, including British Columbia (BC).
“At some point this fiscal, we are expecting our office to be opened in Mumbai — the home for Bollywood. What we are trying to do initially is to take Bollywood filmmakers for location-scouting trips to BC,” Pratap Raju, managing director (technology, research and innovation), British Columbia International Trade and Investment Representative Office, told Business Standard.
BC, which has the same time zone as Hollywood, is the third-largest film television centre in North America, after Los Angeles and New York.
Every year, about 300 productions, including feature films, television series (dramatic, documentary and lifestyle/reality), television projects and animated series are shot in this Canadian province. BC has more than 600 digital media companies, which generate $2.3 billion in annual sales and employ about 16,000 people.
Raju said BC was focusing on attracting gaming and new media companies in India to set up shop, and was hoping at least three such companies to move there. There are 144 game developing companies in BC, including Electronic Arts, Rockstar Vancouver and Piranha games, together producing $1.4 billion in annual revenues and providing 5,000 jobs.
“While Mumbai-based Nazara Technologies has already been signed up by world’s leading interactive entertainment software company Electronic Arts to distribute its catalog in India, Bangladesh and Sri Lanka, Bangalore-based media and entertainment player Protein Entertainment is in advanced stages of making a big buy in the area of IP generation in BC. We are also helping an Indian investor, who earlier was a partner with Electronic Arts, to infuse funds in a BC company,” he said, adding the province’s internal target was to attract $20 million investments from India, across verticals including gaming, IT, energy and clean tech, in the next two calendars.
Stating that there was a huge request and demand for visas from India to Canada despite having 140 Canadian immigration staff based out of India, especially from investor immigrants, Raju said what made BC an investor’s destination was its cost-effective tax structure.
The corporate income tax in BC is 16.5 per cent, compared with 35 per cent in the rest of North America.