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Aug. 18--BANGALORE, India -- Comics is no longer a laughing matter. It is expected to grow into a $1.3 trillion global industry over the next decade, and India has begun to read the fineprint.
One instance of that was seen on Thursday, when film-maker Shekhar Kapur launched a Virgin Comics and Virgin Animation, a creative content company, in Bangalore. The venture is promoted by Kapur in association with Richard Branson of the Virgin Group and Deepak Chopra.
India has traditionally been the store house of mythological characters and the world is beginning to feel there's great talent here for story-telling and the art associated with it.
It's seen to be a matter of creating the characters, telling the story the way world wants it, and marketing it the way the West does.
At the moment the Indian comic book industry is under Rs 100 crore but it is expected to swell into a Rs 400 crore industry in a decade's time. Before long you could be looking at an Indian comic character doing multi-million dollar business globally, just the way Batman and Pokemon are doing today.
"Who knows the next Harry Potter could spring from India," says Shekhar Kapur. "You know India will soon cease to be these sweat shops doing outsourcing work for the West. We are here to tap into Indian originality in the art of story-telling. I want India to colonise the world from a cultural stand-point."
India today is home to sales of 5 million English comic books annually, and together with all the vernacular languages, the figure would cross 30 million.
In US, sales of graphic novels grew by 45 percent last year, and in UK the market has doubled since 2003. Much of the growth in both territories has come from the emergence of comics out of Asia.
According to estimates, 70 percent of comic book sales will emanate from Asia in the next one decade, and majority of the sales will be from India and China.
Gotham Chopra of Gotham Entertainment believe the world could be turning to India for future super comic characters.
"I am sure the sales are going to triple in three years' time in India. We have to just step up on the production quality."
Here India can learn a lot from Japan. Pokemon, which has its origins in Japan, has sold products worth $30 billion so far.
"It's all about how you can market a character globally without losing out on its essence," says Virgin Comics CEO Sharad Devarajan. "India needs to get organised on the retail front," he says.
Once the distribution channels are put in place, India will be a great place to do business. And we can take some of these characters global."
Virgin Comics has created comic character called Devi which has already been launched in US, and the firm is gearing to take the character to great heights overseas. "You will be amazed how Indian characters are lapped up abroad," says Shekhar Kapur.
Comics like Amar Chitra Katha continue to attract youngsters. Even Archies and Tintin have have existed alongside characters from Ramayana and Mahabharata.
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