Rhythm & Hues India

In planning this series on film production, animation and VFX in India, I decided to start with Rhythm & Hues India for several reasons. First is the remarkable corporate culture at R&H in Venice California. I’ve been writing about them for more than a decade and have watched the company grow and change. Because they write most of their own software, Rhythm & Hues developed an early reputation for being able to do things nobody else could. They add and subtract custom processes as needed. But that’s another story in itself. So, R&H is unique in the industry in many ways, and seemed like a good starting point for this series on the film and television industry looking to India to help their productions.

With the need to expand their capacity and keep costs down, Rhythm & Hues looked to India, which has a mature film industry and is a growing outsource country for animation and VFX. At first I figured they were merely outsourcing work to existing Indian VFX houses and calling it R&H India. With this assumption in mind, I wanted to see how they managed quality control from the other side of the world. What I discovered was much different.

“The model we are following at R&H India is not the typical outsourcing model,” explains Saraswathi Balgam, director of operations, R&H India. “Our operation is actually an international expansion of Rhythm & Hues as one company. We are transforming ourselves into a truly global company that is geographically distributed, but at the same time we are keeping it the same unified company”
In essence, R&H India operates in a nearly identical fashion to R&H LA with some localization of policies needed to adapt to the local culture. They use the exact same proprietary pipeline and they have staff meetings that involve people from both sides of the world. With all the broadband communication tools now at their disposal, the biggest distance among the three facilities is not miles, but time.
“The biggest challenge to our business model is the time zone difference as we are 13 hours apart,” explains managing director Prashant Buyyala. “So essentially we have some supervisors in the LA office who come to work around 1pm instead of 10 a.m. and work until around 10 p.m. this gives them two to three hours of overlap with the artists in India who come in around 8:30 a.m. India time. We use this overlap time to conduct production dailies, and have ample opportunities to have questions answered.”

With multiple video conferencing bays, various departments and projects usually hold separate but simultaneous conferences during overlap work hours. The people gather in the appropriate video conferencing bay and conferences begin. Interactive tools are available that allow, for example, the art director to detail exactly what they are seeking to achieve, much as they would if the facility was in the next room.

“We actually have a whole team in Los Angeles that communicates with the India office on a daily basis,” says Buyyala. “In addition every production also communicates directly with their artists in India without having to go through a single point person.”

R&H India just celebrated its sixth anniversary of successful operation and just opened a new facility in Hyderabad where they expect to eventually double their capacity to about 400 employees. They started out with 75 people from the Mumbai facility moving in November to Hyderabad. About two thirds of them will be artists and a third support. They will begin their internship program there, providing opportunities for locals to join the team at a relatively low salary, but getting intense training that is worth more than money. They will slowly build up their capacity and expertise, bringing in experts from LA from time to time to do workshops in compositing, 3D animation, modeling and whatever the new workers need to learn. This state-of-the art sister operation to the facility in Mumbai will be overseen by the same R&H India management team headed by Buyyala and Balgam.

Of course setting up shop in India is not so easy and depends on the having a management team that can both impose the stamp of Rhythm & Hues adherence to excellence, not to mention the workflow pipeline, but also adapt to the particular culture of India. This is where the management team of Buyyala and Balgam have made the difference.

Balgam was born and raised in India, while Buyyala has only recently moved to India. He’s been around the world, raised in Ivory Coast, and worked at R&H in LA for nine years learning the corporate views and culture first hand. He brings a feel for R&H values and systems to India. Buyyala is multi-talented both technically and in management wise. Having grown up in the business working at R&H LA he sees the big picture of R&H as a company. According to Balgam, “Prashant has the big picture of company, sharing (R&H president/founder) John Hughes’ vision, while I have a feel for the people that work here and the local way of doing things.”

Balgam is the mother heart of the operation. She was the first employee of R&H India six years ago, operating from her apartment, and since has remained intrinsically involved in day to day decisions on how things get done in a sometimes chaotic world where infrastructure problems are common and transportation is difficult at best. She’s very practical and crafty at getting the most for the dollar in any given situation.

According to Buyyala; “It would be safe to say that Vani (as she is known by friends and co-workers) is very well respected by her colleagues. She has a personal connection with every employee and was involved in all of their interviews and they all feel very comfortable talking to her. In fact she started the organization in her apartment before she got all the incorporation paperwork done and was able to move to a proper office. She has worked very hard to grow R&H India to its current state and deserves a lot of credit.”

Patrick McCormack is the US-based coordinator of operations between the US and India operations. While India has an existing film industry I wondered if there was concern about finding enough talented people who could learn fast enough to populate the new facility.

“I’ve been amazed by the remarkable work ethic and motivation in India,” McCormack. “These kids (average age of their workers is under 25) see this as a great opportunity and they work their hearts out. In general they learn fast and quickly begin to produce quality output.”

Balgam adds, “We usually end up hiring primarily inexperienced individuals and invest in them with lots of training to get them production ready.” I asked her if she worries about spending time and money training these young people and then having them go off and work for someone else. “We are not worried about losing our trained employees to other companies because we work very hard to provide then all with a great working environment, wonderful projects and exciting growth opportunities. This combination has allowed us to keep a very low attrition rate at R&H India.”

“As a new employee learns their skills and applies them effectively we give them a clear path to ascend. Their pay increases as they move up the ladder. We provide them with many incentives to do well,” explains Balgam. “We make sure our employees are paid relatively well in India and they all lead a good quality of life. The animation industry is a fast emerging field here, with a severe shortage of talent. So salaries in our industry are very high compared to people of similar years of experience in other industries. It is a similar story to the booming IT industry in India.”

The wonderful corporate culture from Jandy Place, Venice, has been adapted to work in India with the key focus on taking care of their workers. They clearly care about making a beautiful, peaceful and well equipped workplace, with corporate policies favoring employees. This is quite exceptional in India. According to Balgam, “We treat our people with the respect that they earn here. We become an important part of their lives and we take that seriously.”

All 200 or so employees at R&H India are true employees of the company general. They’re treated with the same respect and generosity as you’ll find here in the US. Balgam explained to me that because their culture is different from the US, various programs have been adapted to fit comfortably in India. For example, a medical doctor comes to the workplace once a week to provide consultation and treatment if anyone has medical issues. In the early days, management would take the whole crew out to see a movie and it was first facility in India to provide free breakfast for workers. They have flexible hours because of the horrendous traffic in Mumbai making timeliness difficult. They even provide transportation for some of their employees. Health and accident insurance is also provided. All of this is somewhat unusual for India.

In terms of salary compensation, the pay system in India is different from the US. Because there is a shortage of skilled labor in India, R&H has instituted a training program. Those applicants with the most aptitude are taken on and given intensive training for free. R&H then takes the cream of the crop as interns. They are given a very small salary to start with, but ahead of them they can see a long string of performance based raises and bonuses. At the end of the day, employees who reach or surpass their performance goals end up with pay and benefits that are exceptionally good for the area. Because poverty is widespread in India, young people appreciate the opportunity for a good life and are generally highly motivated to learn and perform at R&H India.

Because the CG community in India is relatively new, R&H is taking an active role in helping it grow. They’ve instituted weekly CG get together sessions for Mumbai artists and will be doing the same in Hyderabad. Balgam is also head of India’s ASIFA (International Animation Society) group and helped arrange their national conference this year.

“The key reason for the success of R&H India is the people we have here,” says Buyyala. “Along with Vani, we have assembled a wonderful team of dedicated and talented individuals who all work their hearts out for the company. We are all very passionate about the goals and ideals that we are trying to achieve in India, and we also know that this is a long process that requires tremendous patience. So in the meanwhile we shouldn’t forget to have fun too! Vani helps us remember this aspect of it.”

All companies have their problems and this industry has its share. I don’t mean to make R&H seem too perfect. Sure they have problems, especially with the tightening of our industry. That said, the vision and competence being demonstrated by John Hughes’ and his India team deserve to be commended. It’s so nice when Hollywood gets things right.