Singapore – Singapore based August Media Holdings announced that it has acquired Scottish children’s content producer Red Kite Animation. Founded by industry veteran Jyotirmoy Saha (Moy), August Media was formed as an integrated media company to produce, finance and distribute live action, animation and online content. The acquisition of Red Kite Animation is the first major step for August Media in its plans to create an operation with multiple business units that will produce, own and exploit programming for both traditional and new media platforms. As part of its business strategy August Media has been actively seeking inorganic growth opportunities through acquisition of existing successful businesses that give it access to different markets and territories. The acquisition of Red Kite Animation is the first major step towards this for August Media. The global animation services market is highly competitive. Within Singapore’s neighborhood China and India sport a much older animation industry and enjoy far lower operating costs. This yields strong competition against animation service companies not only in Singapore but also around the world. Many western countries also have strong barriers against entry to their media markets which makes it difficult for small companies from Asia to compete in their animation business space. In the midst of this August Media is positioning itself to be the bridge that engages local Singaporean animation companies in services and co-productions for premium kids’ content commissioned by Red Kite’s existing clientele of broadcasters and distributors in the West. Under the terms of the deal Red Kite Animation will operate as a subsidiary of August Media with Ken Anderson remaining as creative director. In addition he will also take a seat on August Media’s board of directors and serve as executive director for August Media’s other business interests. The company also added that it is already in discussion with various Singaporean companies for the past few months and expects to announce a whole host of high value deals during the upcoming MIPCOM TV market in Cannes. August Media will be attending MIPCOM as part of MDA’s Singapore Pavilion.