Sometime in the 1990s, entrepreneur G.A. Menon, who was already a big name in the electronics industry, came across an article in the Los Angeles Times about works related to the software industry, especially animation, moving to more cost-effective locations in Asia and elsewhere. Soon, he pitched the idea with the Comcraft Group to start an animation company in Thiruvananthapuram, with Bill Dennis, a long-time Disney executive, as a co-founder.
Thus was set up Toonz Animation India Limited, one of the first animation companies in the country, which has now completed 25 years of operations, during which it has grown across the globe as a creator, producer, and distributor of premium content for children.
“It was something totally new for Kerala. In the initial days, one of our most critical challenges was to train the people to execute projects with international production values. We brought in around 75 expert animators from countries such as the Philippines, Singapore, and Australia. For five years, they stayed at the studio, worked and trained people. We also launched an event, which later became the Animation Masters Summit, and brought in well-known names in the industry, to give a platform for Indian animators to interact and learn from them. Our first customer was the Cartoon Network for a show called Get Tooned. Initially, everything was hand drawn, scanned and painted, taking hours to make even a small show,” says P. Jayakumar, Chief Executive Officer of Toonz Media Group for the past two decades, in an interview to The Hindu.
