Rajasekhar Buggaveeti, a multimedia entrepreneur from Telangana, India, has dedicated the past 24 years to coaching and mentoring aspiring computer graphic artists and digital designers. Through his academy, Creative Multimedia, he aims to increase the employability of his students by providing digital media education and customised, recruiter-specific training to deliver job-ready talent.
The academy has been recognised as "Best Digital Media Academy in India" and Rajasekhar is also the author of the book "Exciting Careers in Digital Media."
Multimedia in India
The use of multimedia in various tasks, including administration and marketing, has become increasingly prevalent among businesses in India. This digital revolution has opened diverse job opportunities in all industries. A report by the Confederation of Indian Industry and Boston Consulting Group (CII-BCG) predicts that the Indian media and entertainment industry alone will generate around 700,000 to 800,000 new jobs this year.
How important do you think multimedia is in today’s world?
The digital revolution is creating new and diverse job opportunities while necessitating huge reskilling of the existing workforce. Multimedia is a massive sector generating lakhs of jobs every year. Be it creative jobs such as writing, illustration, concept art, and direction; tech-based jobs such as graphic design, 3D Animation, VFX Compositing, and Game Testing; or emerging careers such as UX/UI Design, Artificial Intelligence (AI), Virtual Reality (VR), and Augmented Reality (AR); the multimedia sector is witnessing a spike in the quantity and diversity of jobs being created.
Creative Multimedia is now an Unreal Authorized Training Center, can you explain in your words, what potential India has for Unreal Engine in Gaming?
As an Unreal Authorized Training Center (UATC), your training center will deliver world-class Unreal Engine training to professionals. India is a fast-growing gaming market with soaring user engagement statistics. Because of this there is a massive attraction for advanced 3D creation tools such as Unreal Engine.
The Indian gaming industry has been highly receptive to emerging technologies such as AI (Artificial intelligence), VR (Virtual reality), AR (Augmented reality), XR (Extended Reality), and concepts such as decentralization and metaverse. These are gaining increasing popularity in games. In this context, the Indian gaming industry offers good prospects for Unreal Engine.
A report by Statista has also stated that in the Video Games segment, the number of users is expected to amount to 327.1m users by 2027. User penetration will be 19.6% in 2023 and is expected to hit 22.3% by 2027.
What motivated you to start the academy?
Well, a combination of factors: my deep passion for multimedia, the opportunity to turn entrepreneur, and a shot at nation-building.
Can you explain about the training centre and the milestones the students have achieved with the training in Creative Multimedia?
Creative Multimedia is one of India’s oldest multimedia training academies. Honoured with the “Best Digital Media Academy in India” award, we have been setting the standards in multimedia education for the past two and half decades and have won several prestigious awards for our training excellence.
Our students have bagged over 100 coveted awards at various national and international short film festivals and digital art competitions, the most recent one being the “Best VFX Short Film Award” for the film “Oh No!” in the student category at the ASIFA India Awards of Excellence 2022-2023.
From Amazon to Cognizant, Deloitte, Digital Domain, DNEG, EA, Green Gold Animation, HCL, Infosys, Microsoft, MPC, TCS, and Technicolor, to name just a few, they all arrive by the dozens to cherry-pick India’s best trained creative CG talent right here at our campus in Dilsukhnagar, Hyderabad India.
What was one of the biggest hurdles you have had to cross with your journey with Creative Multimedia?
In the introduction stage, building trust, gaining a foothold in the market, and stealing a march over competition proved very challenging. During the growth stage, scaling up and sustaining the momentum consumed much of our energies as they came with their own set of challenges. Nevertheless, our sharp focus on setting training benchmarks delivered excellent results.
But all through our journey, the biggest hurdle has been the difficulty in hiring and retaining high-quality trainers. The dearth of talent and high attrition rates in the industry makes it difficult for us to hold on to good talent for longer periods even today. However, having navigated the vicissitudes of business, we believe the worst is behind us and we are now better prepared for the future.
Multimedia is constantly growing and how do you keep up with the constantly changing field?
As eager as we are to stay abreast of new developments, we are also quick to unlearn so as to make room for new and more relevant knowledge. Our deep industry connections allow us to ensure updated programs that meet the evolving needs of recruiters while our firm commitment to our student’s careers ensures that we continually invest in advanced learning resources.
Decisively, our penchant for benchmarks drives us to innovate and introduce radical initiatives that allow our students to prepare better, gain a competitive edge over their peers, and stay job-ready.
Can you share your experience with your students who are in Technicolor and made their contribution to many Hollywood movies?
Well, I’m extremely proud of them and the laurels that they have brought to the academy. The fact that they were enlisted to work on prestigious projects like Transformers, The Lion King, Dumbo, Godzilla, Spiderman, and Pinocchio, reflects the trust that Technicolor reposed in our academy’s training and talent. A total of 31 students from Creative Multimedia were hired recently by Technicolor and all of them are faring exceptionally well. They can only go higher now. Whether it’s Hollywood or Bollywood and Tollywood, our alumni of over 27000 CG artists and digital designers are spread across the globe and offering their best for the Digital Media & Entertainment industry.
Prior to the Technicolor placements, 16 of our students were hired by Amazon. Every year, several MNCs participate in campus drives through our placements initiative “Our Campus - Your Interviews” and hire our students. The entry-level salaries are in the range of Rs 3 to 7 lakhs per annum.
Can you explain the way the students are being trained under Creative Multimedia?
Since inception, we’ve approached training through the industry’s lens and this pragmatism continues to benefit our students. Our training is underpinned by two vital ideas. Enhancing Employability, and Pixellence; involve practices and procedures designed to produce high-quality, well-rounded talent ready to hit the ground running.
A stimulating environment combined with authoritative content and breakthrough initiatives defines the training rigor at Creative Multimedia. Continuously innovating the game with new training paradigms, we recently introduced LXD (Learning Xperience Design) a proprietary learning methodology that does away with the hitherto individual theory-practical classes, fusing them into an integrated, experiential session with exceptional learning outcomes.
Many other initiatives such as field visits to studios, workshops, and knowledge-sharing sessions by experts add the practical edge to the training program, helping students acquire vital industry knowledge and job skills while staying prepared for job interviews and careers ahead.
If there is anything else you would like to add about your organisation?
Distilling 24 years of wisdom in multimedia training, Creative Multimedia recently launched “Exciting Careers in Digital Media” - the first-of-its-kind book that consolidates all the key disciplines of the AVGC sector to provide comprehensive coverage of careers in Filmmaking, Animation, VFX, Gaming, Graphic Design, Web and Mobile Design, and Digital Marketing. The book covers 72 skill sets straddling seven Digital Media & Entertainment verticals.
The book is now available in English as well as in Telugu. It has come in for exceptional praise from leading lights of the media and entertainment industry. Attracting interest from multimedia enthusiasts across the country the book is available on the e-commerce platform Amazon, at leading bookstores in Hyderabad, and at Creative Multimedia’s headquarters at Dilsukhnagar, Hyderabad.
