Ontario interactive industries see eastern promise in India

Representatives from a trio of Toronto area new media shops are currently in India with Ontario premier Dalton McGuinty as part of a trade mission backed by the province’s Ministry of Culture. For two of the three, it’s a homecoming of sorts.While he was born and raised in India, Arnie Guha, a partner in e-marketing and usability firm Phase 5 Consulting Group, went back for the first time just five years ago. He says the experience instilled in him the desire to create a new company, Flash Karma, devoted to producing interactive content for mobile devices. "There’s a sense of optimism right now in India" in regard to all things tech, Guha says. "It’s always had smart people, but not always the recognition."Thanks to a father who worked for the Canadian International Development Agency, Bitcasters Inc. CEO and president Nathon Gunn spent some of his formative years in India during the 1980s. "I first started programming computers with my Commodore 64 in Delhi. So, this will be full circle for me," he says.Patrick Crowe, at Xenophile Media, is something of an odd man out in the group: he doesn’t have an extensive personal history with India. He does, however, appreciate its potential. "We’ve been spending a lot of time focusing on foreign markets lately, so it’s just part of what I think all companies in the media sector in Canada have to do to survive," he says.Given that budgets are always tight in new media, Crowe says much of his time on the trip will be spent "on the lookout for…what economies might exist by working with Indian suppliers." Indeed, India was the setting for much of one of Xenophile’s past successes: the alternate reality game Fallen, a tie-in to a movie of the week that aired on US cable network ABC Family last year.Bitcasters, meanwhile, is hoping to drum up interest in one property in particular: Hollywood Tycoon, a simulation game that allows players to create their own movie studio. While the North American version of the game won’t launch until this spring, Gunn is already seeing the potential of adapting the title for the whims of the film-crazy Indian market. "I’m really interested in creating a whole different game for the Indian market, which is totally different graphics – not just a language change, but actually the style of movies that get made in the game, that kind of thing," he says.In fact, Gunn left Canada in advance of the official delegation to attend an animation and gaming conference in Hyderabad put on by the National Association of Software and Service Companies, an Indian body which acts as a trade association and chamber of commerce for IT companies. He says it’s an ideal opportunity to buttonhole executives at Indian creative firms and find out how he might work with them.Indian firms of particular interest to Bitcasters include top Indian news portal Rediff.com, which caters to both domestic and international Indian audiences, and UTV Software Communications Ltd., a massive integrated media company that incorporates game development studios, television broadcasting, feature films, and more. Late last year, UTV tendered an offer to acquire India Games, the largest developer and publisher of games for mobile devices and the operator of a gaming-on-demand network.Down the list of Gunn’s priorities for the trip is sourcing creative talent, not just for his gaming properties but also for a children’s animated series Bitcasters is quietly working on. "We may want to look at animation and modelling companies in India – probably not programming, because that’s really got to be done close to the chest, close to home," he says.Guha, meanwhile, plans to target "both domestic and diasporic audiences" in the Indian community by marketing and packaging reskinned gaming engines. To that end, he’s hoping to forge links with two types of partner on the trip. "On the distribution side, I’d be very happy if we could come back with a few partners under our belt," he says, throwing out the same names as Gunn – namely, Rediff and UTV, both of which have sizable distribution networks at their disposal.More so than Gunn, Guha is also hoping to connect with some Indian creative talent as part of the trip. He’s mindful of the need to tailor content – if not create it outright – with the Indian market in mind, a process he calls "masalafication.""This is Canadian and will remain so, but perhaps the reskinning can be done by Indians," Guha says. "It’s very hard to take something that’s totally Western and sell it to an Indian audience without recontextualizing it."Of course, the experience of being abroad has traditionally fostered bonds between travellers, and Canadian new media executives are no exception: as veterans of previous trade missions organized by various levels of government, both Crowe and Gunn say it’s likely that a discussion of how the three firms might work with one another will be on the agenda as well."You can’t but help but underline that," says Xenophile’s Crowe. "The people you meet who are from home, the political contacts – all that is valuable.""I might end up doing a deal with Arnie Guha as much as I might end up doing a deal with somebody in Mumbai, which is always the irony of these trips," adds Gunn. "Arnie would like to form those relationships, and then in future guys like me would go through Arnie. If, in the future, Arnie wants to fly to India every day and I don’t have to, I may in fact work with Arnie."

Ontario interactive industries see eastern promise in India

Broadcast | January 24, 2007

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