Singapore-based media and entertainment-related investments company, Vistas Media Capital, today announced the acquisition of a majority stake in Paperboat Design Studios, an animation and design company based out of India, for an undisclosed amount. The studio, with more than 250full time employees across offices in Mumbai and Hyderabad, will help stride Vistas Media Capital’s growing media ecosystem that spans across film and video content, NFT, gaming and metaverse.
The move reflects VMC’s ongoing commitment to expand its value chain of media, entertainment, and related technologies. This deal comes at the heels of a newly announced film project between Golden Ratio Films (GRF) – a wholly-owned subsidiary of VMC and US-based production company Appian Way Productions last month.
Established over a decade ago, Paperboat Design Studios has created animation and design work, and produced live-action film for a diverse clientele. The studio also offers VFX and CGI services through its majorly owned subsidiary Occult Studios, based out of Mumbai. Some of the major clients of Paperboat and Occult include Disney India, Discovery Kids, McCann, World Bank, Coca Cola, Cadburys, Nestle, Burger King, and Reebok.
Abhayanand Singh, Group CEO, Vistas Media Capital said, “Paperboat is a team of passionate, talented and creative people, with a proven track record in animation and VFX. We welcome them to the Vistas eco-system and hope to have a synergistic relationship to grow the business beyond India across content, gaming and metaverse.”
“We are extremely excited about being a part of Vistas Media Capital as it gives us an opportunity to explore exponential growth across genres and markets. The capital infused will be used to expand the team, create original IPs, and cross synergize other verticals with them. The business and its offerings are at an inflection point of massive explosion in the post COVID world, across digital and traditional media.” said Soumitra Ranade, CEO and Co-Founder of Paperboat Design Studios.
Paperboat has worked on several popular television series including Bandbudh aur Budbak and Fukrey Boyzz. The studio also worked on the 2D animated feature film, Bombay Rose, which premiered at the Venice Film Festival in 2019 and was the first Indian animation to open for the Venice Film Critics’ Week. Bombay Rose received critical acclamation for its animation quality and was the winner for Best Animated Film at the 2021 ANN awards.
Currently, Paperboat is working on 2 international animation projects- Bhrigu and the Palace of Mirrors based on the book with the same name and Kabuliwala, based on the classic short story by Nobel prize laureate Rabindranath Tagore.
