MUMBAI, India — Like many Indians who came of age in the 1980s, Samir Patil grew up on the comic books published by Amar Chitra Katha. Made up of Indian-style Aesop’s fables, religious parables and biographies of historical figures, they taught him about the great, and lesser-known, stories of India in a didactic format meant for young audiences.
Now, Mr. Patil, a 38-year-old former McKinsey consultant who acquired the publisher two years ago, is betting that he can do the same for a new generation of Indian children who have been raised watching TV, sending text messages and surfing the Web.
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/07/20/business/global/20comics.html?em
He plans to broadcast animated versions of his comics on Indian television starting early next year. He expects the shows to appear first on the Cartoon Network in India, and he is negotiating deals with the Disney Channel and Nickelodeon.
Vodafone, the wireless company, already sells Amar Chitra Katha comics, wallpapers and ring tones. Mr. Patil’s team of software and animation experts in Bangalore recently released an online multiplayer game, The Legend of Katha. Last year, Mr. Patil acquired a company, Karadi Tales, that makes audio books for young children
In a decline similar to what happened to the Western comic giants like Marvel, the sales and wide popularity of Amar Chitra Katha comics had fallen sharply in the years before Mr. Patil and a partner, Shripal Morakhia, acquired the publisher. Mr. Patil would not say how much they had paid.
The company was losing the war for an audience to satellite television, the Internet and Bollywood. Efforts to animate its stories did not gain much traction under its previous parent, India Book House, a book distributor. (Mr. Morakhia, who previously sold an online stock trading company to Citigroup, owns a majority stake in their firm, ACK Media, but does not have an active management role.)
Now, Mr. Patil hopes to take advantage of a vacuum in children’s entertainment in India’s otherwise bountiful media market. Most television shows that cater to children, for instance, are imported from the United States, Japan and other countries and dubbed into local languages, even though the vast majority of adult programming is produced locally to suit Indian tastes.
Most foreign and local companies have focused their attention on general entertainment, partly because most Indian homes have only one television, so most children often watch whatever their parents and grandparents watch.
But that is starting to change. Businesses are eager to tap into India’s growing youth market; more than 30 percent of the country’s population is 14 or younger. “Advertisers are demanding local content, and they are willing to pay a premium for it,” Mr. Patil said.
Amar Chitra Katha — which translates as Immortal Illustrated Stories — has something of a natural advantage because it enjoys wide name recognition across India and among people of Indian origin overseas. The company, which employs 150 people, sells about three million comic books a year, in English and more than 20 Indian languages. It has sold about 100 million copies since it was founded in 1967 by a newspaper executive, Anant Pai.
Still, the firm that Mr. Patil bought cannot claim exclusive rights to the age-old myths and stories that form the core of its library. Some of those stories have already been turned into lucrative TV and film franchises by others. Mr. Patil acknowledges that he will have to diversify into new stories and characters to succeed.
Other industry officials caution that it will take time for comic book publishers to succeed in other media. Mainstream media companies have traditionally been dismissive of comics and have only recently begun to warm up to them, said Sanjay Gupta, studio head at Raj Comics, a firm based in New Delhi. Raj publishes action books, including the popular “Doga” series about a vigilante who wears a dog mask, which is being adapted into a Bollywood movie.
“There is still not that much local content” on the air, Mr. Gupta said. “On TV, they have been repeating the same things they have been doing for the last 10 years.”
L. Subramanyan, the chief executive of Chandamama, a children’s magazine publisher based in Chennai, said electronic media provide a “fantastic opportunity” for Indian publishers, but it may take a few years for them to break through.
“Everything requires time, and that time, unfortunately, is expensive,” he said. “A normal animation takes over two years. In those two or three years, nothing comes out except a two- or three-minute promo.”
Mr. Patil said production was well on its way for his first made-for-TV animations, and he expected a limited release in theaters for some of his projects next year.