MUMBAI: Maya Entertainment Ltd, which recently appointed UTV veteran Ronald D’mello as managing director and CEO, has restructured its business in three distinct verticals – animation services, content production and education.
Each of these three verticals will be managed by an independent team comprising a business head, creative, technical and operational teams.
D’mello said, “It is important that each segment of business is given enough focus to achieve its full potential. All three verticals of business require distinct core competencies and hence we have now restructured them with independent anchor teams comprising of internal leaders and few hired or to be hired leaders from the industry. We anticipate MEL to achieve significant growth and dominant market position in each of the verticals in the time to come.”
The animation services vertical will be led by Jai Natarajan, a CG veteran formerly of Lucasfilm and Prana who has been an overseas production consultant for MEL since 2005. Natarajan joins as executive vice president and business head.
Additionally, Crest Animation’s Virendra Chauhan has been appointed as executive vice president creative to work in close association with Natarajan in this vertical. Chauhan began his career as an animator with Crest Animation Studios 16 years ago. As an artist he has worked for ad films, TV series, corporate films, inflight entertainment and live action films. He has also directed ad films, short films and worked as a visual FX supervisor for Hindi and South Indian movies. MEL’s current orderbook includes a 30 episode TV series for a European Broadcaster, CG for a full length animation feature film for a Indian film producer and service work for character design, game cinematics and animation for US based clients.
Chetan Desai, an old hand at MEL, who headed the creative and technical team of CG and VFX, has been elevated as executive vice president creative in its content production vertical. Desai will spearhead MEL’s foray into creation of own content IP’s in all segments including movies, TV serials, home video and new media. MEL has already commenced pre-production work on a mythology based animation movie and is incubating animation and live action content projects for television and home video exploitation.
MEL’s education vertical Maya Academy for Advanced Cinematics (MAAC) domestic operations will be led by Naveen Gupta, a mechanical engineer who has been associated with MAAC since its inception and has seen MAAC spread over 60 centers. MAAC is poised to expand its presence in India substantially in the coming year while evaluating strong forays into overseas markets.
