Green Gold Animation has more reasons to rejoice this month after having celebrated its poster boy – Chhota Bheem’s – seventh birth anniversary on 1 May. The retail store of Green Gold is readying to set up shop in the island country of Singapore early next month at Changi Airport.
“Chhota Bheem is now 7 years old and we are very happy that the brand is a household name in India. We already have Chhota Bheem on Vasantham channel in Singapore, which is part of MediaCorp and thus we want to further capitalise on the merchandise side of things now,” reveals Green Gold Animation founder Rajiv Chilaka.
Rajiv further goes onto express his joy at this achievement as he jogs back his memory and remembers how he had once seen a Tin Tin store in Little India, Singapore and had fantasized of having a similar store for his IPs and with this kiosk that dream is now becoming a reality.
“The team has really worked hard on making this dream come true and though these are early days still we are confident of this move after having enjoyed much success with our earlier outlet at the Mumbai International airport, which is still very lucrative,” expounds Rajiv.
The team at Green Gold believes that there is a large audience for the characters of Green Gold, but they want to currently go ahead with merchandise around their most popular character Chhota Bheem and slowly get the other characters in the mix as well. “There are a lot of people there who relate with the character, thus the idea of opening a store in Singapore came about. We want to be in other countries as well, but we have learnt that if we make a bang in Singapore then it opens the door to whole of Southeast Asia,” beams Rajiv.
There are already plans afoot to explore opportunities in Bali and Jakarta in Indonesia as that is the second biggest market for Chhota Bheem fans after India; and once the show gets licensed in the Middle East, that territory will be tapped as well.
“At the moment there will be the normal back to school collections of stationary and school bags, and even the new range of products will be made available. Initially Chhota Bheem merchandise will only be there but that will soon be followed by Mighty Raju and Arjun as well,” explains Green Gold Store – head, Sudeesh Varma.
Green Gold Animation has recently renewed its deal with Vasantham Channel and sent them a fresh catalogue of 65 episodes and 10 TV movies of Chhota Bheem.
The major challenges that Green Gold will face in the foreign territory is the expensive labour and also fierce competition from the other kiosks in the vicinity. Piracy too has been a big issue for the Indian market, and Green Gold has only been getting 10 per cent of what they deserve for the merchandise of Chhota Bheem, “Some of the pirates are actually out-thinking us and with education and right precautions we are sure we will conquer this devil as well. If we see a positive response in Changai Airport then we will look at opening more stores in Singapore as well,” ends a confident Rajiv.