India is ripe for adult animation to take off, says Bakarmax founder

Falah Faisal

Recently, Bakarmax- India’s only indie webcomic publisher had a lot to rant about on Twitter. An animation show they were planning to make for Hotstar – Aaapki Poojita, a satire on the Indian TV serials got cancelled because the gatekeepers believe there is no room for adult animation in India.

To get a deeper insight into it, we spoke to Sumit Kumar, the founder of Bakarmax and the creator of the show. “Even though it sounds vulgar, adult animation does not mean adult, it is something we have to clarify at every pitch we make and even happened when we went on Shark Tank,” says Sumit, who previously has written for Savita Bhabhi. “Now, we are planning a Kickstarter and calling in experts to get the show off the floor, they felt that too but that’s just the industry term.” People often associate adult animation with comedy with shows like Simpsons, South Park, Family Guy, and Bojack Horseman ruling the roost, but it doesn’t always have to be a comedy, believes Sumit who would like his shows to be a mix of comedy and drama.

 “We haven’t had a good comedy show that makes fun of India since Jaspal Bhatti’s Flop Show which came out in 1989. Simpsons started in 1987, the year I was born but since then we haven’t even been able to make one,” says Sumit.

On what is stopping us, Sumit believes the gatekeepers don’t believe Indian animation will fly. “Doing animation is not what takes effort. The only problem is convincing producers to give you money for it and nobody wants to take the risk. They are waiting for someone to take the risk and fail before something succeeds then they will commission 10 shows in 6 months,” believes Sumit, having had his show recently cancelled at Hotstar before launching the trailer on YouTube.

 But is the Indian audience mature enough for the dark humour of his show? Sumit definitely believes they are. “When we did our Hotstar pitch, we were asked to choose our audience. Either it is all India or the niche upper class, but even that niche audience is large enough to make a show successful,” he says.

 “It really doesn’t need to be Indian, you just have to go ahead and tell your story. If it is honest, it will work,” he concludes, hoping that he can kickstart the animation boom and it will save Indian Television the way Rick and Morty and Bojack Horseman saved American TV