Japanese entertainment company Akatsuki is looking to tie up with a various video streaming players and cable television services to adapt its local content for Indian audiences. Akatsuki is best known for mobile games such as Dragon Ball Z and Bringing Up My Girl, and franchises such as Japan Sinks 2020 and Kumarba.
“Apart from English and Hindi, we’re looking at dubbing them into other top Indian languages such as Tamil, Telugu, Marathi and Bengali. But in another two to three years, we want to looking at developing Indian originals with local writers and talent here,” said Yuki Kawamura, head of global IP (intellectual property) expansion, in-charge of international business development and corporate development at Akatsuki Inc. Kawamura said the popularity of Japanese anime such as Doraemon and Shin-chan in India helped the company recognize the potential of the market.
Starting with Netflix, Amazon Prime Video, Disney+ Hotstar and YouTube, the company will initially dub Japanese originals into Indian languages which will be available by the end of this year.
Animation is catching up with Indian audiences with films like The Lion King, crossing the rupees 1.55 billion mark last year, emerging as the highest grossing Hollywood animation feature in India. the Indian animation and VFX segment is estimated to grow to rupees 156 billion by 2022 according to the Ficci-EY media and entertainment industry report 2020.