BENGALURU: Today is the turn of India’s garden city Bengaluru (Bangalore)  to get insights on  how its animation, gaming, TV channel and production and film executives can take audiovisual content from Karnataka global through markets such as MipTV and MipCom which have been organised in Cannes for decades now.

An intimate audience in Chennai  (having a similar profile) engaged with Reed Midem representatives Ted Baracos, Paul Barbaro and India representative Anil Wanvari on 20 January.

“Bengaluru has built up its reputation as India’s Silicon Valley,” says Baracos. “We, at Reed Midem, would love to see it known for its prowess in the media and entertainment space too. MipTV and MipCom offer the biggest gatherings of buying and selling executives from TV and digital from all over the world, and can work well to catapult Bengaluru in front of these folks. It could well serve as a good starting point to start the Karnataka content export engine to new markets.”

“For that to successfully happen, Karnataka’s industry will have to take a bold step in wanting to be a part of a content export  economy which runs into billions of dollars each year,” adds Barbaro. “In recent times, Korea, Russia, Turkey and even provinces in China have been step by step increasing their initiatives in this direction. There is a huge pie out there in the 100 or so countries that participate in MipCom and MipTV respectively.”

To reach out to the community in Bengaluru, a partnership was struck by Reed Midem  with the Association of Bangalore’s Animation Industry (ABAI) a couple of years ago. And today’s get together will see that relationship bearing fruit as ABAI is sending scores of its representatives to attend the seminar entitled “Content without boundaries.”

“MipTV offers scores of opportunities: right from simple syndication to co-production to licensing to co-creation,” says Wanvari. “The neighouring state of Andhra Pradesh has already taken strides in that direction and its government has been encouraging producers and creators to go global. I believe Karnataka’s content production industry can use these opportunities to gradually get their revenues moving northward.”

The industry get together will take place this evening at the Hotel Aloft in the swanky IT district - the Whitefield area - from 7:00 pm onwards. 

The road show will next move to Mumbai where a seminar is planned for 24 January.