In 2014, when V Ravi Shankar, a digital transformation solutions head at Infosys, Bengaluru, approached production studios with the idea of making an animation movie in Sanskrit, he encountered more critics than he'd imagined. "For them, the idea was ludicrous, almost laughable," he recalls. If Rajinikath-Deepika Padukone starrer Kochadaiyaan, a virtual motion-captured film made on a budget of Rs 125 crore, could tank at the box office, what hope did he have? In a telephone interview from the IT capital, he tells us how out of every 100 people he had spoken to, only two or three showed a glimmer of interest. The rest asked him to stop wasting his time and devote his adult life to something "more productive".

Today, Shankar stands vindicated. His film Punyakoti - the first crowdsourced attempt at making a full length 2D animated film in Sanskrit - has reached its post production stage. What's interesting is that over 100 people from across the country have collaborated on the project, including actress Revathi, music maestro Ilaiyaraja, National Award-winning editor Manoj Kannath and puppeteers Anupama and Vidyashankar Hoskere.