Tata Elxsi found the spotlight in morning trades on Thursday after the company won at least four animation orders in Hollywood, including one involving a movie.

The scrip of the Bangalore-based company rose 2.82% to Rs 71.10 by 10:25 IST. It registered volumes of 33,648 shares on BSE by then. Tata Elxsi has now risen 10.66% from Rs 64.25 on 11 March 2003.

The Mediaworks division of the Tata Group company's product design arm, formed a year ago, has bagged four orders with a delivery schedule of up to 18 months. However the company did not give any project details, citing non-disclosure agreements with the customers.

Tata Elxsi, a Rs 132-crore (Rs 1.32-billion) company, also works on Bollywood projects, besides commercials with advertising agencies. The revenue from the division involving Hollywood and Bollywood projects is estimated to have reached $5 million in 18 months.

Of the 100 professionals Tata Elxsi's MediaWorks division employs, 75 are with the TV and animation section in Bangalore and around 25 in Mumbai working on special effects for movies and TV serials. The company plans to increase the team to 200 in the next six months

TEL, promoted by Tata Industries is a part of the Tata group, India's largest industrial conglomerate and a dominant player in the IT industry. The Tata group holds around 38% of the TEL's equity. The company was incorporated in 1989 with its registered office at Bangalore, India. It has now grown to over 16 sales and support offices countrywide, representative offices in the US and Japan and 3 design and development centres in Bangalore staffed by over 800 employees.

TEL is a leading company assessed at SEI CMM Level 5 specifically for product design processes. The strong focus on design and processes, apart from adding innovation, facilitates in offering customers cost effective and time-to-market solutions.

With design at the core of the business, Tata Elxsi is focused on the product R&D outsourcing market space. Its unique proposition is to achieve global leadership in designing innovative products, content and solutions for a global customer base. The spectrum includes high technology product design in networking, semiconductors, consumer devices, storage and media, leadership in CAD/CAM and industrial design solutions for the engineering, automobile and consumer products industries and content design in the animation space for the media and entertainment companies.

As part of its foray into newer areas, the company has set up a media services group, which will focus on animation, post-production and creating special effects for the broadcast industry. Through this new group, the company intends to tap the overseas multimedia market, which is a high margin business.

For the third quarter ended 31 December 2003, Tata Elxsi posted 12.7% fall in net profit to Rs 4.03 crore on an 8% drop in net sales to Rs 25.20 crore. However, on a sequential quarter basis, PAT is up 40% on a 9% fall in sales.

BSE code: 500408