The 2011 Academy Awards saw 10 nominations in the VFX (visual effects) category. Of these, five films (including X-Men: First Class, Transformers: Dark of the Moon and The Tree of Life) had engaged an Indian company for 2D-to-3D conversion and post-production work. Prime Focus Limited (PFL), a global visual entertainment services company, has been instrumental in altering the Hollywood perception that only US-based studios excelled in visual effects, 3D and animation. Today, 40 percent of Hollywood’s VFX and 3D work gets done in Asian countries like India, Malaysia, South Korea, Thailand and the Philippines, says a 2013 KPMG report.
According to PFL’s 2011-12 annual report, its creative services division Prime Focus World (PFW) had a 38 percent share in the global market for 3D conversion. Since the launch of View-D, its proprietary 2D-to-3D conversion arm, in 2009, it has worked on projects including Avatar, Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part 2, The Chronicles of Narnia: The Voyage of the Dawn Treader, Clash of the Titans, Star Wars: Episode One—The Phantom Menace, The Twilight Saga: New Moon and World War Z.
In 2D-to-3D conversion, PFL competes with Hollywood’s Legend 3D (Alice in Wonderland and Transformers), Stereo D (Titanic and Avengers) and Rocket Science 3D (Immortals and Gulliver’s Travels). In India, though, it is the only company making inroads into the nascent 3D market. In VFX, PFL faces stiff competition from Shah Rukh Khan-owned Red Chillies Entertainment, which is warming up to Hollywood projects after Ra.One.
From a tiny studio in Mumbai, the company has more than doubled its revenues from Rs 354 crore in March 2009 to Rs 762 crore in March 2013. It has a 4,500-strong workforce in 16 offices across the world. As a media expert at a global consulting firm puts it, “It has broken international barriers in the film industry.” And its journey has been fascinating.
Humble Beginnings
PFL was founded by 18-year-old Namit Malhotra in 1995. He had dreams of becoming a filmmaker—inevitably so. His father Naresh Malhotra was a film producer; his grandfather was a cinematographer who had worked with BR Chopra.
But paucity of funds put Malhotra’s ambitions on the backburner; instead, he took a course in computer graphics. Thereafter, along with three others (Merzin Tavaria, Prakash Kurup and Huzefa Lokhandwala, who were his instructors), he set up a small editing studio in a garage next to his apartment in Khar, Mumbai. “I’m the third generation in the entertainment business,” he says.
As satellite television was taking off in India in the mid-’90s, they moved to the services side when his father initiated an equipment rental business, Video Works. For about two years, the studio was being run as a traditional proprietorship, almost like a “small shop”, and was called Video Workshop. “We did some low-budget pilot TV programmes which caught on very well,” says Malhotra. They did everything from visual effects to digital art to colour correction. “I was not always able to sell the technology but I could sell the solution,” he says. “I told my dad that I can’t be running a godown and a workshop. I wanted to leverage the creative aspects of my own business.”
And thus, at 19, he had a big business plan—and he was willing to pitch hard. Rupert Murdoch-owned Star was setting up operations in India, and Malhotra wanted to build the backend for them. “We will provide cameras and create content as well—that was my pitch to Star. I went to Hong Kong and presented the business plan. They loved it,” says Malhotra. But that partnership didn’t take off due to lack of funds.
It was in 1997 that Video Workshop gave way to Prime Focus Private Limited. “We had a Rs 2 crore debt on a Rs 75 lakh turnover at the time. We had to consolidate,” says Malhotra. The business expanded: From small-time TV shows, they started working on ads and music videos.
“We worked with MTV. We became Channel V’s in-house design team. We did advertising by day and television by night. My facility would run 24 hours and I had to buy low-cost machines because I didn’t have funds,” he says.
Dearth of money meant coming up with innovative and cost-efficient ways of work. “I was nobody in the business. But that changed very quickly. We had no real experience but our work was really edgy,” says Malhotra.
SHARP RISE
With PFT’s CLEAR technology, “Star TV has eliminated tape completely. Everything is networked across one platform. There’s not a single DVD going back and forth,”says Malhotra.
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(This story appears in the 04 October, 2013 issue of Forbes India. To visit our Archives, click here.)
"While most vendors said they needed eight months for the conversion, Namit said we could do it in eight weeks" The film Director himself said the conversion was 'Absolutely Horrible' http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/heat-vision/clash-titans-director-calls-3d-559105
on Oct 12, 2013Look at the picture above and you understand how Namit Malhotra estimates people :)
on Oct 10, 2013Hi Justin, While i was reading the phrase - "While most vendors said they needed eight months for the conversion, Namit said we could do it in eight weeks", i was thinking about the kind of torture they put their employees through. Yes i completely agree that some companies in India are becoming like sweat shops and they know that it is not sustainable. But who cares!!!
on Oct 3, 2013\"But who cares\" That\'s the mentality. Lowering the price of a product (the work of artists in this case) is only good for the owners and never for the whole VFX artists community. Let\'s see who will care when you will have to sell your work for a quarter of its value
on Oct 3, 2013English is not my First language.I should have phrased \"but who cares\" with \"Unfortunately no one seems to care\". There are not many organisations, at least in India which think about employees. All they care about is \'deliverable\'s\' and \'deadlines\'. No one is talking about work-life balance. No one seems to know, how to say \'NO\'. I am not aware of anything about what goes on with the company in this article, but there are companies in India, which charge north of 100,000 INR to offer a job. But this is pulled on freshers mostly, and they take lot of pressure to meet deadlines while they receive little to no training. But why the employees do it ? To put it simply, they have been set benchmarks by the society.
on Oct 3, 2013"Prime Focus Limited (PFL), a global visual entertainment services company, has been instrumental in altering the Hollywood perception that only US-based studios excelled in visual effects, 3D and animation." The only reason Prime Focus is doing well is because they are cheap. And the studios are hell bent on tax subsidies. If you really want to write an honest article about PM then you should write about how the have sweat shop conditions in India and pay their artist almost nothing. As a matter of fact in some cases it is less then nothing because they require a new employee to pay a deposit and if they are let go before a certain amount of time they don't get the deposit back. This can result in a negative amount of total wages! This is why they only have faux shops in the US. They have not real production going on here because they know they will not be able to treat their employees that way.
on Oct 3, 2013Agree
on Oct 3, 2013Totally agreed. They are making name as the company in industry but fact is very different. Employees are being tortured. They Take deposit from the freshers and don\'t give back Don\'t give salary as a person deserves. At last people leave this field. These type of companies have destroyed our industry. God bless our industry
on Oct 4, 2013The article doesn't speak about the losses and the negative EPS of the company in FY'13. http://www.moneycontrol.com/financials/primefocus/profit-loss/PF13#PF13 Could you please throw some light on this?
on Oct 2, 2013