A native of Kolkata, west Bengal Hansa Mondal is a woman entrepreneur with one very innovative idea. She makes cartoons! CUTE. Ssoftoons, her animation startup has created over 1,000 characters so far for all of its series, and the total time taken for all of the content to design has exceeded 50,000 minutes.
Hansa Mondal was working as a health advisor but one-day creativity knocked at her door and that was when life changed for Mondal. Hansa started a new business after quitting a well-paying job, but the road there was not easy.
Being a complete novice in the field, she studied drawing to learn more about identity proportion and background perspective and animation at a prestigious institute to learn more about the animation pipeline. She became a pioneer in this area by assimilating the understanding of storyboards & direction from numerous international books. She never wavered in the pursuit of her goals, and today she is an accomplished leader and businesswoman.
Innovative Idea – Ssoftoons
Hansa Mondal’s dream project Ssoftoons began its journey almost two decades ago with the goal of producing useful animation content. The goal was fairly straightforward and clear! The only goal when setting out on the journey was to provide high-quality animation content that people could easily relate to. Despite numerous obstacles, Ssoftoons never looked back and made millions of millennials and members of Generation Z enjoy. By providing quality material in local languages in an educational and entertaining manner.
Ssoftoons revolutionised the animation industry. A few of their many creations include Gopal Bhar, Lullu, Batul Pandav Goyenda, Thakumar Jhuli, Mollah Nasiruddin, Panchatantra and Note Fonte, they started primarily with distributing videos on CDs, VCDs, and television.
By releasing VCDs, the period from 2003 to 2010 once more dominated the market, but piracy put an end to it. The company fell to the ground from close nine, it was the moment when the women entrepreneur almost gave up. But determination moved power in her, she continued working even harder.
Time passed and with it the views, opinions, and perspectives of society as a whole. Ssoftoons continued on as well. Along with the usual distribution channels, Ssoftoons made its content available on Facebook and Youtube in response to the rising demand for high-quality content on digital platforms. Without a doubt, it marked & set a notable record in terms of viewers, and it’s still going! Their videos will soon be broadcast on our specialised app & OTT platforms.
Women Entrepreneur Made Her Way Through Bluriness
Mondal was raised in Kolkata, but her roots belong to extremely different states of India, her paternal hometown is kerala while he maternal hometown is Jaipur, Rajasthan. She attended Andrews High School and later graduated from Calcutta University with a degree in science as her major. As a young girl, she always imagined herself as a doctor working in a white coat but life had something else planned for her, something very different and new.
She invested her heart in becoming a cardiac surgeon, but she was forced to settle for a BSc. With a degree, in Bsc she ended up finding herself working in the medical industry but as an assistant. She loved her life but there was still something missing in her life and to fill the void she started engaging herself in learning the language of computer programming and turned her attention toward the world of coding. It was here that she first became interested in animation. Her life trajectory changed after this! Not just her professional calling in animation happened at this time, but also she met her life partner at this time.
Hansa Mondal began her entrepreneurial venture in 2001 with her life and business partner Sourav Mondal. The very well-known company throughout the country had a start similar to many struggling innovative ideas & startups. As her infant innovative ideas were extremely novel yet difficult for people to understand, they had little funds and even lesser support at the start. Hansa with Sourav worked for 10 struggling years to make the buisness a success in the local market and eventually in making it one of India’s top animation studios.
She was passionate about emotions but not in a contemporary way, her way of expression was unique. She had innovative ideas to express her emotions and that is how the foundation of her interest in animation grew.
The couple discovered their passions for computer programming and animation, and they both found common ground on starting something of their own. So as soon as the course was over, they opened a production company in a small garage with 2 computers and started their journey into the animation industry!
The innovative idea was driven by comics, tho everything was pretty much like a comic yet it was more fun and amazing to convert the comic characters into an audio-visual medium.
The Road To Success
It was difficult to develop a taste for animation among the locals as it was considered an enjoyment for the kids only but the couple was successful in fulfilling the entertainment appetite of the people of Bengal. As the video was in the local language it started finding a doorway in Bengal people’s daily life windows. She intended to keep the IP rather than sell it in order to gain a significant market share, which gave rise to the creation of her Channels on youtube.
To join the national market, she immigrated with Sourav and their two children, Konishko and Darsh. There, she pitched her innovative ideas to many National Portals and was able to establish a rapport with one of them (Paapometer in Sony Yay). That was it, she found her gateway to the national level, and then there was no going back.
Today the company have millions of subscribers and billions of views and is operating successfully. She has completed several successful projects and is currently employed by Disney India. She currently holds the position of Chief operating officer at Ssoftoons, which she operates and executes to maintain a smooth flow. She enjoys reading books about leadership, management, and international and domestic investments.
Her confidence & strength to begin a new career in the field of animation came from her knowledge. She firmly believes that anything is possible with enough effort, commitment, sincerity and patience.
Feature Image – Twitter
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