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'Mahavatar Narasimha' to 'Kurukshetra': Indian Animation's Coming of Age in 2025
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.
Grow Up
“Our film targeted (an audience between) 10-year-olds to 80-year-olds, with three generations; kids also enjoyed it, given the violence they see on video games and television anyway. The seduction scene in the beginning breaks the stereotype in the minds of people, that this is a serious film; it is no ordinary kid’s film. Besides, when you look through the prism of dharma (righteousness) on why sex and violence are conducted, then the audience knows it is appropriate, because at its heart, Mahavatar Narasimha is a film about devotion and faith,” Kumar says.
There was also Kurukshetra, which launched on Netflix — the first mythological anime series from Netflix India — and Mahabharat–Ek Dharmayudh, made using only artificial intelligence (AI), on JioHotstar. Baahubali: The Epic was also announced with a ₹120 crore budget, making it one of the most expensive animated films.
Structurally, these films won’t need to follow the demands of cartoons, where non-linear storytelling is gospel, because of children’s attention spans, and their proclivity for repeating episodes. “Children don’t want to be hooked to a story from start to end,” Ashish Thapar, chief executive officer of HiTech Animation Studios, the studio behind Kurukshetra, says.
“This is the coming-of-age era for animation in India,” says Arjun Madhavan, chief executive officer, Assemblage Entertainment, which is India’s premier CGI (computer-generated imagery) Animation house. They’ve worked on projects such as Netflix’s Wolf King, Laxman Utekar’s Chhaava, and DreamWorks’ Gabby’s Dollhouse: The Movie. “It’s arrived at by a self-made, self-taught, self-inspired ecosystem that has learned on the job, by trying, failing, and watching over their shoulder. Now we are just about beginning to understand the artistry behind animation, and from the back-office, becoming the backbone of animation for the world.”
False Starts
According to Crunchyroll president Rahul Purini, today, India has the second-largest anime market and fandom in the world. But animation first came to India in the late 1990s, and by the mid-2000s there was a rumble. Percept Picture Company was doling out Hanuman films — one even directed by Anurag Kashyap, who later bemoaned his experience, vowing to never return to animation. Big production houses and studios like Yash Raj Films and Dharma Productions were also pouring in money. While the former made Roadside Romeo (2008), which didn’t fare well, the latter made Koochie Koochie Hota Hai, which, though completed, was never released. The doors to animation in commercial cinema seemed firmly shut.
“We were too early to tell an animation story. First, the technology was not there. There was no audience. Today, the age group of people from one to 35 years of age have all grown up watching animation. But for the 40 to 45 plus, when we were growing up, animation was limited,” says Thapar.
“So, today you have a wider audience than 10 years ago. You need to have your audience first, then think beyond the pond. Also, perhaps, the story was not correct for an Indian audience. To kickstart animation, we need homegrown Indian stories — mythology,” he notes.
Madhavan, too, notes that an appetite for animation must be created among audiences. “It is like food. Five years ago, you wouldn’t have that many Japanese or Mexican restaurants. With exposure, the palette changes, and now there is an appetite, and hence, access.”
The Safe Bet
The vicious loop of bad quality animation, because of low budgets, a lacking audience, or bad quality animation, has been broken by the success of Mahavatar Narasimha, which showed that there is an audience for animation films, buoying producers to put their money on the line.
But it is important to make the distinction between what one is willing to watch versus what one is willing to pay for. Not all stories have the industrial strength to weather a theatrical release. “Even Chhota Bheem, despite being a huge success on television, was not able to translate it into theatrical footfalls when it was released as films. We should know what needs to go where,” Thapar says.
A common thread through all the animation films and shows this year is the use of mythology. Even Stree, a homegrown horror-comedy franchise tied to local myth, is spinning off its own animation film, Choti Stree. Will India ever make its own Wall-E, an animation film untethered to mythology or already existing intellectual properties?
“Mythology has a lot of potential. We have to evolve as storytellers but first we need to feed the audience and once they get used to it, then we can start experimenting,” says Thapar.
Mythology, even historical epics, will de-risk a lot of the animation projects being rolled out, since these are, according to Madhavan, “low hanging fruits. We are priming the audience for deeper, darker, and more original stories.”
What about the quality of the films? Can Indian animation aspire to Hayao Miyazaki’s hand-drawn empire of beauty? “Good storytelling and average animation will always work here,” Thapar says. Right now, the animation industry needs to work — beauty might not be on their horizon of thought.
In this vein, AI has taken over the conversation, with the recently released and widely critiqued Mahabharat–Ek Dharmayudh. Is it too early to have an entire animation series made on AI?
“AI is going to be an integral part of animation. Right now, we use AI in our systems, conceptualisation, and storyboarding. But we are still far away from using AI to make an entire show. Right now, you will not get a loyal audience for a show made completely on AI,” says Thapar. Kumar agrees, “Currently, I don’t think you can use AI to prompt something you can watch and weep.”
What is clear, however, is that there is now clear evidence for demand, and a rush to supply this demand for animation with stories, mediocrity notwithstanding. “You should not be surprised if within the next three to five years you see 100 to 200 animated films, which will help our indigenous animation industry, which it lacked,” says Kumar. We are, as it were, staring at the future of animation being scripted.
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