IICT, Netflix to offer scholarships to next generation of Indian storytellers

The Indian Institute of Creative Technologies (IICT) and Netflix have announced scholarships for 100 students, covering up to 80 per cent of programme fees across six professional courses in animation, visual effects, gaming and comics.

The initiative is aimed at students and working professionals across India. The scholarships will cover six programmes offered by IICT, comprising two one-year diploma courses and four six-month certificate programmes.

The two diploma programmes are Interactive Comics & Sequential Arts and Visual Effects Mastery. The certificate programmes are Virtual Art Department Content Creation, Media Tech Workflow, Art of Character Animation, and E-Sports & Gaming Management.

The announcement follows a meeting between Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Netflix Co-CEO Ted Sarandos on August 5, after which the Netflix India Storytelling Initiative was launched. The initiative seeks to invest in India’s creative talent pipeline and equip the next generation of storytellers with skills relevant to the animation, visual effects, gaming and comics (AVGC) ecosystem.

The AVGC sector is emerging as an important component of India’s “Orange Economy”, with technology increasingly transforming the way content and stories are developed, produced and distributed.

Chanchal Kumar, Secretary, Ministry of Information & Broadcasting, and Chairman of the IICT Board, said India’s creative economy was at an “inflection point” as technology reshaped the process of storytelling.

“IICT was envisioned as a bridge between India’s enormous creative talent pool and the rapidly changing needs of the global AVGC-XR industry,” Kumar said, adding that partnerships with global industry players would help bring professional knowledge and expertise into classrooms and prepare students for the creative workforce of the future.

IICT CEO Vishwas Deoskar said the collaboration would ensure that the skills imparted through the institute remained aligned with the changing requirements of the industry.

He said the partnership with Netflix would bring industry perspectives into IICT’s academic framework, including curriculum design, professional workflows and the standards expected from students. Combining structured education, industry inputs and financial support would help create a stronger talent pipeline for India’s growing creative economy, he added.

IICT is India’s national centre of excellence for the Animation, Visual Effects, Gaming, Comics and Extended Reality (AVGC-XR) sector. It was established by the Ministry of Information & Broadcasting in partnership with the Government of Maharashtra, the Federation of Indian Chambers of Commerce and Industry (FICCI) and the Confederation of Indian Industry (CII).

The institute currently operates from the NFDC Complex on Pedder Road in Mumbai, while its permanent 10-acre campus is under development at Film City, Goregaon.