IICT signs five MoUs, plans Kerala centre for AVGC-XR skilling
On September 30, at FICCI FRAMES 2026 in Mumbai, the Indian Institute of Creative Technologies (IICT) - India's national centre of excellence for animation, VFX, gaming, comics and XR - signed five memorandums of understanding at the Grand…
On September 30, at FICCI FRAMES 2026 in Mumbai, the Indian Institute of Creative Technologies (IICT) - India's national centre of excellence for animation, VFX, gaming, comics and XR - signed five memorandums of understanding at the Grand Hyatt, in the presence of Maharashtra minister Ashish Shelar.
The partners are MPA India, C-DIT Kerala, ESGF, RioWood and Warm Up Ventures, and each covers a different piece of the AVGC-XR pipeline rather than restating the same ambition five times.
The one that matters most for where this sector is headed is the agreement with C-DIT, Kerala's state-run digital technology centre. It backs a proposed Kerala State Centre of Excellence for AVGC-XR in Thiruvananthapuram, covering curriculum development, faculty training and studio internships. Kerala joins Haryana, Tamil Nadu and Karnataka, each of which already has its own state AVGC-XR policy - a sign that this build-out is becoming a network of regional centres rather than a single Mumbai flagship.
The remaining four MoUs fill in different gaps. MPA India's deal is about industry-academia exposure: knowledge exchange and real industry contact for students heading into film, television and streaming. ESGF's is esports-specific, covering training, infrastructure, research and international partnerships. RioWood's spans education, AI and media technology, and reportedly includes six-month scholarships, workshops, startup incubation, and work on digital rights and provenance. Warm Up Ventures' agreement is aimed at founders rather than students: mentorship, investor access, and a connection into Global South startup networks.
What it signals
None of these five deals is, on its own, large news. What they add up to is more interesting: a training pipeline (MPA India, C-DIT), a niche-specific one (ESGF for esports), and a funnel into company formation (RioWood, Warm Up Ventures), all signed on the same day by the same institute. That is a different kind of announcement from the ones this sector has made for the past year, which were mostly about institutions opening and funding being approved.
A national centre of excellence proves intent. A state centre with a named curriculum and faculty-training plan proves the training can actually happen outside Mumbai and Bengaluru, in a city with no existing production industry to draw on. And a mentorship-and-investor MoU is the first piece of this build-out pointed directly at the businesses the training is meant to eventually produce, rather than at the people being trained.
The open question in Indian AVGC-XR has never really been whether institutions would get built - state governments have been competing to announce centres of excellence for two years. It is whether a graduate coming out of one of them has anywhere to go: a studio to intern at, a founder to pitch, an investor who has heard of the category. Five MoUs signed in an afternoon will not answer that on their own, but they are a more concrete step toward it than another policy launch would have been.
Sources
- IICT signs five MoUs at FICCI FRAMES 2026 - Exchange4media
- IICT signs five MoUs at FICCI FRAMES 2026 with MPA India, C-DIT Kerala, ESGF and others - Storyboard18
- Keralam to set up AVGC-XR centre of excellence - ThePrint (PTI)
- IICT signs five MoUs with MPA India, C-DIT Kerala, ESGF, RioWood and Warm Up Ventures at FICCI FRAMES 2026 - Medianews4u
