A CELEBRATION OF POWERFUL.TRAILBLAZING WOMEN SHAPING THE FUTURE OF ENTERTAINMENT AND BEYOND.

HONOURING TALENT. AMPLIFYING VOICES. INSPIRING CHANGE.

- BY PRATHYUSH PARASURAMAN

MORE THAN AN EVENT — A MOVEMENT THAT RECOGNISES EXCELLENCE, INDIVIDUALITY AND INFLUENCE.

Industry leaders credit a maturing audience, bolder themes and mythological familiarity for driving India's animation renaissance in 2025

The past year was a watershed one for Indian animation. The ambitious Mahavatar Narasimha, a mythological animation film (first in the seven-part Mahavatar Cinematic Universe, based on the 10 avatars of Vishnu) made on a budget of ₹40 crores, pulled in over ₹300 crores at the box office. It became the highest-grossing Indian animated film ever, and the sixth highest-grossing Indian film of 2025.

It uncovered an appetite for a new kind of animation, one that isn't tied to children as the primary target audience. It also proves that in India, animation — often referred to as “cartoons” because in the public imagination it caters only to kids — is having a larger reckoning. “We knew the audience for an animation film around the world is huge, and we also knew that India as a market for animation, commercially, needs to be cracked, or needs a new perspective. We approached it from the fact that we are doing a film that happens to be animated, as opposed to doing an animation film,” says Ashwin Kumar, director of Mahavatar Narasimha.

Both sex and violence are anathema to children's films. Kumar's film, which took over four years to make, with over 120 people, (“one-hundredth the size of a Disney film”), starts off with a heaving, moaning seduction scene and ends in an orgy of grisly violence. By shouldering both, Kumar made a statement: this animation film is no cartoon.

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