In 1995, an 18-year-old in Mumbai did something that made no obvious sense at the time. He mortgaged his family's house to fund an editing studio in his father's garage, built around a single computer. 

He had no proof that Indian visual effects work could ever hold its own against Hollywood. Namit Malhotra bet on it anyway. 

Three decades later, the studio that grew out of that garage has gone on to win eight Academy Awards for visual effects, working on films like Dune, Interstellar and Blade Runner 2049.

A family of storytellers, a different tool

Malhotra was born into a filmmaking family, which makes his choice of tools all the more striking. 

His grandfather was a Bollywood cinematographer who worked on one of India's first colour films in 1953, and his father, Naresh Malhotra, produced hits including the 1988 classic Shahenshah. 

Namit grew up around film sets and storytelling, and he dreamed of telling stories himself. But rather than picking up a camera the way his family had, he picked up a computer.

He recruited three instructors from the computer graphics course he had just completed and began building........

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