MUMBAI: Avitel Post Studioz has raised growth funding of Rs 500 million (Rs 50 crore) from a wholly owned subsidiary of The HSBC Asian Ventures Fund 3, a fund advised by the HSBC Private Equity Asia (HPEA) Group.

HPEA director James Savage, based in Hong Kong will join the board of Avitel.

Avitel has a presence in the domestic post production market, focusing both on feature film and advertising markets. The domestic post production and visual special effects industry in India is estimated to be Rs 10 billion (Rs 1000 crore) and expected to grow at a CAGR of 18 per cent over the next three – five years.

Avitel Group chairman Pradeep Jain said, "With animation work orders worth Rs 150 crore in hand; we plan to recruit around 300 professionals in the next two years in areas of script-writing, direction, production set-up, production pipeline design, animation skills and management, to match the timeline for our global projects."

Savage added, "Avitel is a leading provider of post-production and related services for both Indian and overseas media and entertainment clients. It has established a leading presence in the newly emerging film restoration business and made exciting progress in the animation business. We believe that Avitel is well positioned to benefit from these new opportunities."

HSBC Private Equity Advisors (India) Mumbai director, head Venture Investment (India) Alok Gupta said, "The Avitel management team has demonstrated great operational skills in building a robust and diverse business model. We intend to support Avitel in its growth and expansion plans through our network and reach in other Asian markets."

Standard Chartered – STCI capital markets head equity capital markets Sridhar said, "We believe in themes that have growth potential and media was on our focus and within media we found that Avitel had an extremely unique business model and has been growing at a phenomenal rate."