India’s first creative tech institute opened in Mumbai
Union Minister Ashwini Vaishnaw on Friday inaugurated the first campus of the Indian Institute of Creative Technologies (IICT) on the National Film Development Corporation (NFDC) premises in Mumbai, marking a historic moment for India’s creative economy.
Positioned as a national flagship institution for creative technologies, IICT aims to lead the way in cutting-edge education and industry integration in fields like VFX, gaming, animation and extended reality (XR).
In his address, Vaishnaw, said IICTs would be developed across the country, following the institutional models of IITs and IIMs. The Mumbai campus will serve as the flagship, with the next facility coming up at Film City, for which Rs 400 crore has already been allocated by the Maharashtra Government.
The IICT has partnered with top global tech firms, including Google, Meta, NVIDIA, Microsoft, Apple, Adobe and WPP, to design industry-oriented training modules. A formal agreement has also been signed with York University, and talks are ongoing with four other global academic institutions.
The institute will begin by training 300 students and trainers in its first year, offering a flexible mix of short-term and long-term programmes ranging from three months to two years.
“This is a great opportunity for the country’s youth and future. It’s a medley of programmes because each and every activity, each and every field would require a different type of course curriculum to be developed,” said Vaishnaw.
Maharashtra Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis, who also attended the inauguration, reaffirmed the state’s ambition to position Mumbai as the global capital of the creative economy. He announced Rs 150-crore state fund to support the WAVES (World Audio Visual Entertainment Summit) initiative and creative startups, and urged the Centre to provide further assistance.
“The WAVES Index, which tracks 42 creative economy companies, shows a rise in total valuation from Rs 93,000 crore to Rs 1 lakh crore in a short time. This sector is growing rapidly and must be supported,” Fadnavis said. He also shared plans to host a mega biennial global creative summit in Mumbai, modelled after the World Economic Forum at Davos.
The event also featured the unveiling of the Bharat Pavilion, a permanent museum installation at Gulshan Mahal within the National Museum of Indian Cinema (NMIC), tracing India’s creative journey “from Shruti to Streaming”. The CM hailed it as a key addition to Mumbai’s cultural and tourism landscape.
India