FutureWorks: Shaping India's VFX scene

Gaurav Gupta, CEO and founder of FutureWorks, discusses talent retention, industry changes, and the rapidly evolving VFX environment in India

- Gaurav Gupta

Seeing the opportunity in a shifting industry landscape, Gaurav Gupta founded FutureWorks in 2007 from a room in his father’s office.

When discussing the move towards digitisation and increasing demand for long-form content at the time, CEO Gupta begins by reminiscing.

“Platforms like Netflix started to take off, and a digital-first approach was becoming the standard for the industry,” he says. “It was clear that digitally distributed content and the platforms facilitating that would represent a new area for growth for VFX and post-production, since the market back then was already at capacity.”

With the Indian VFX scene still in its infancy, Gupta built FutureWorks with the clear goal of becoming the trusted partner for productions in both the international and burgeoning Indian film markets. “When we started there were only a few players in India, but they made everything sound so complicated, not delivering on promises, making clients unhappy because of how they were being shortchanged and suddenly getting bills piling up. We wanted to change that,” he continues.

“Our goal was and continues to be to foster lasting relationships with our clients, built on transparency and creative collaboration. We take every feedback on board and pride ourselves on accountability and clear communication. Every bid we submit is detailed and every cost increase or time delay is communicated as early as possible, so there are no surprises.”