Examine the role of the AVGC-XR sector in India's orange economy. How far can institutions such as IICT make India a global creative-technology hub?

The orange economy is the part of the economy built on creativity, culture and intellectual property (IP). AVGC-XR (Animation, Visual Effects, Gaming, Comics and Extended Reality) is its most technology-heavy segment. India's immersive-tech market is projected to grow from USD 1,259.5 million (2023) to USD 7,818.7 million by 2030, a CAGR of 29.8% [1]. IICT can drive this growth, but it cannot make India a global hub by itself.

Role of AVGC-XR in the orange economy

• Jobs: the sector may need about 2 million professionals by 2030 [2].
• IP and exports: the AVGC Task Force (Dec 2022) proposed a funded National AVGC-XR Mission to move India from outsourced service work to owning its IP ("Create in India") [3].
• Skilling from school level: Budget 2026–27 gave ₹250 crore for Content Creator Labs in 15,000 secondary schools and 500 colleges [2].
• Spillovers into other sectors: virtual labs in education, immersive training in healthcare and virtual heritage tourism [1].

IICT: strengths

• Industry-linked PPP: a Section 8 company with FICCI and CII as partners. It works with Google, Meta, NVIDIA and Microsoft on curricula and tools [4].
• Early results: by March 2026 it had 18 courses, 136 students and 15 Train-the-Trainer graduates [5].
• Reach: it uses a hub-and-spoke model [4] and is the nodal agency for the labs [6].

IICT: limits

• Scale gap: 136 students [5] is very small against a need for 2 million workers [2].
• Slow rollout: in April 2026 the labs were still at the stakeholder-consultation stage [6], and the spoke institutions have not been named.
• Weak basics in schools: only 67.4% of schools have internet and 69.9% have computers (UDISE+ 2025-26) [7].
• Task Force recommendations still pending: standard curricula and a focus on Tier-2/3 towns and on women [3].

AVGC-XR can turn India's young population and digital base into IP-led growth. IICT is necessary but not sufficient. The way forward is to:

• launch the National AVGC-XR Mission;
• name the spoke institutions through agreements with states;
• place labs in schools that UDISE+ shows are ready;
• write DPDP Act, 2023 data rules into contracts with device vendors.

With these steps, IICT can lead India's move from back-office creative work to a "Create in India" hub, which also advances SDG 8 (decent work).