Netflix, IICT announce 100 scholarships for Indian students in technology programmes

Ziraat Times Team Report

Mumbai, August 26: The Indian Institute of Creative Technologies (IICT) and Netflix have announced scholarships for 100 students, offering financial support of up to 80 per cent across six professional programmes in animation, visual effects, gaming, comics and related creative technologies.

The scholarships will be available to students and working professionals from across India and cover two one-year diploma programmes and four six-month certificate programmes.

The programmes covered under the initiative include diplomas in Interactive Comics & Sequential Arts and Visual Effects Mastery, along with certificates in Virtual Art Department Content Creation, Media Tech Workflow, Art of Character Animation, and E-Sports & Gaming Management.

The initiative follows a meeting between Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Netflix Co-CEO Ted Sarandos on August 5, where the Prime Minister highlighted India’s rich storytelling tradition and large pool of creative talent.

The Netflix India Storytelling Initiative was launched with the objective of strengthening India’s creative talent pipeline and equipping the next generation of storytellers with industry-relevant skills across the Animation, Visual Effects, Gaming and Comics (AVGC) ecosystem.

Industry-aligned curriculum

The curriculum for IICT’s Visual Effects Mastery and Media Tech Workflow programmes has been developed in line with contemporary industry workflows and global standards, with inputs from Netflix.

Secretary, Ministry of Information & Broadcasting and Chairman of the IICT Board Chanchal Kumar said India’s creative economy was at an “inflection point” as technology transformed the way stories were created.

He said IICT was envisioned as a bridge between India’s creative talent pool and the evolving requirements of the global AVGC-XR industry, adding that partnerships with leading global players would bring industry knowledge into classrooms and help prepare students for the creative workforce of the future.

IICT CEO Vishwas Deoskar said the collaboration would bring industry perspectives into the academic framework, including curriculum design, professional workflows and the standards expected from students.

Chairman of the FICCI AVGC-XR Forum Munjal Shroff said the FICCI-IICT-Netflix collaboration marked a shift towards industry-aligned talent development and would contribute to building a future-ready workforce for India’s AVGC-XR sector.

IICT’s national creative technology role

IICT is a national centre of excellence for the Animation, Visual Effects, Gaming, Comics and Extended Reality (AVGC-XR) sector. It was established by the Ministry of Information & Broadcasting in partnership with the Government of Maharashtra, FICCI and CII.

The institute currently operates from the NFDC Complex on Pedder Road in Mumbai, while its permanent 10-acre campus is being developed at Film City, Goregaon.

The scholarship initiative is part of efforts to expand access to specialised creative-technology education and strengthen India’s position as a global hub for content creation and the broader “Orange Economy.”