^{With a viewership of 34 million children,chhota bheem, the cartoon created by green gold animation, is the first ever indian animation character to have its own line of branded merchandise and exclusive stores.}

These days, Hanuman and Krishna are busy fighting it out with the likes of Ben 10 and Mickey Mouse in the world of children’s animation. With more localised Indian content slowly gaining viewership in India, joining the gods in giving them a good fight is a little hero who has managed to catch every child’s attention – Chhota Bheem. Conceptualised by Secunderabad-based Green Gold Animation Pvt. Ltd. (Green Gold), Chhota Bheem aired in April 2008 as a 13 episodic television series and soon got children hooked onto its protagonist’s adventures. In its third year running, TAM Media Research shows that Chhota Bheem is watched by 34.732 million children in India in the first half of 2011 (see box) and has led to a highly profitable offshoot business that sees 100 per cent revenue growth every year through sales from its branded merchandise. Green Gold is also setting up exclusive stores in Hyderabad in May this year and in Kolkata by this September end.

“Chhota Bheem was developed keeping in mind the keen sentiments and expectations of Indian audiences between the ages four to 11. When we made the show we knew that it would do well, but we never imagined that Chhota Bheem would go on to become the most popular animated television show in the history of Indian television,” says Rajiv Chilakalapudi (37), founder and managing director of Green Gold.

Chilakalapudi believes it is the affable nature of the main characters like Bheem, Chutki and Jaggu that has Indian children tuning in to watch the series on a regular basis. “The unique selling proposition of the series is its method of storytelling. Though the stories in the series carry a lot of complexities and mysteries, they are also laced with rib tickling instances of humour and mirth. Also, the stories unfold at a brisk pace. We wanted to achieve a compelling sense of mystery and drama without compromising on the basic ideals of the series – namely that it should be clean and bereft of blood, gore, dark mysteries and other such elements,” says Chilakalapudi.

Conceptualising the small wonder

The idea of Chhota Bheem took root when the company was working on one of its earlier productions ‘Vikram aur Betal’ (VB). During its production, the company’s artists pointed out that in every episode there were new locations and new characters. Hence, the time taken to produce such an episode is much longer. “We realised that in order to produce a show within a budget and a time frame, we needed to have one with a fixed location and repeated characters. We also realised that VB was not really attractive for children. We then started to work on new story ideas and soon, we were able to come up with the idea of Chhota Bheem,” says Chilakalapudi.

Inspired by the Pandava prince Bheema, the show alludes to some of his characteristics like his incredible strength and Bheema’s favourite food: ladoos. Chhota Bheem derives his strength by eating ladoos. “Ladoos are the most loved Indian sweets and often prepared for festivals or given as prasad at temples. Hence, we felt that ladoos were the obvious choice. But Chhota Bheem is also shown having healthy foods like banana, milk and parathas,” says Chilakalapudi. He adds that every other aspect of the show was developed fresh: from the imaginary setting of Dholakpur and its rural landscape to the many supporting characters. Throughout the production, Chilakalapudi designed the series keeping in mind the interests of children of varying age groups. “I imagined that if I am around nine years old, then I want to be like Bheem. And if I have a younger brother, I want him to be like Raju and I want my pet to be a talking monkey like Jaggu and have a reliable friend like Chutki and so forth. I continuously pictured being in the shoes of each of these characters and developed them further,” he adds.