One Life Studios marks ten years with Raaya launch and Rocket Boys deal

CANNES: Ten years in, One Life Studios is not slowing down. The Indian independent has used MIPCOM in Cannes to celebrate its decade in business with a double announcement: a new kids animation IP called Raaya: The Great Indian Tales, and a licensing deal that takes two seasons of Rocket Boys to British Columbia.

One Life Studios (OLS) describes itself as the leading independent Indian media company, working across content production, acquisition, distribution and syndication. The news, dated Cannes, France, October 12, 2026, shows a company that wants to be judged on what it sells abroad as much as on what it makes at home.

Start with Raaya. The animation IP launches at MIPJunior and MIPCOM, and OLS is not leaving its debut to chance. A live character is roaming the halls of the Palais des Festivals, chatting with delegates and handing out game pieces that point them to the OLS booth, P-1, K11, where they can collect the entire deck of game cards. It is a neat piece of street marketing for a market floor that never stops moving.

The character is the real hook. Raaya is an inquisitive 9-year-old Indian girl who is curious, funny, emotionally honest and occasionally inconvenient, as curious children tend to be. Her mission is to question everything, from the symbols of Indian history and religion to nature and the universe at large. Two guides help her. Uncle Al is a narrator who keeps alive the Indian tradition of passing stories from one generation to the next. Veda is her AI bot, which supplies instant knowledge. Raaya must weigh the answers from both and think carefully about the true meaning of each query. In her world, oral tradition meets the search engine, with a precocious child in between.

The analysis is straightforward. Children’s content travels well when it pairs a universal trait, curiosity, with a distinctive cultural setting. Raaya does exactly that, and the old-versus-new tension of a storyteller and a chatbot speaks to how children now learn. A game-card deck gives the IP a physical life beyond the screen.

The second announcement is a sale to a public broadcaster. OLS has agreed a deal with Knowledge Network, a Canadian public broadcaster, to bring the acclaimed Indian biographical drama Rocket Boys to audiences across British Columbia. The series is licensed from Sony and distributed to Knowledge Network by OLS. The term is four years and five months, non-exclusive. Each season has eight episodes of 60 minutes each. Rights cover free English-language telecast through permitted simultaneous linear broadcast distribution and reception methods, including cable, satellite, IPTV, mobile and wireless transmission and simultaneous broadband streaming, as contracted.

Rocket Boys dramatises the lives and friendship of Dr Homi J. Bhabha and Dr Vikram Sarabhai, two pioneering Indian scientists whose work helped shape the country’s nuclear and space programmes. The series explores science and innovation, space exploration, nuclear science, scientific institution-building, friendship, ambition, personal sacrifice and nation-building in the formative years of independent India. Bhabha was instrumental in establishing India’s nuclear science infrastructure and played a central role in creating the Atomic Energy Establishment, Trombay, later renamed the Bhabha Atomic Research Centre. Sarabhai was one of the principal architects of India’s space programme and played a major role in developing its early rocket-launching and space infrastructure.

The show arrives with a strong record. At the Filmfare OTT Awards 2022 it won eight of its 15 nominations: best series, best director (Abhay Pannu), best actor in a series, critics (male) (Jim Sarbh), best original screenplay, best cinematography, best production design, best costume design and best VFX. The series and its creative team have also been recognised at the Indian Television Academy Awards, Critics Choice Awards, Indian Telly Streaming Awards, Hitlist OTT Awards and Promax Asia, among others.

The audience maths helps too. David Van Poppel, senior manager, primetime programming and acquisitions at Knowledge Network, said: “We’re thrilled to have the Canadian broadcast premiere of the series Rocket Boys. BC audiences include over 300,000 people of Indian origin, some whose ancestors arrived in BC in the late 1800s. We look forward to sharing the series with our audiences in British Columbia.”

Siddharth Kumar Tewary, chief executive of One Life Studios, said: “One Life Studios is thrilled to be at both MIPJunior and MIPCOM as we celebrate ten years of bringing compelling Indian stories to audiences around the world. This milestone year comes with exciting new developments, including the launch of our new animated children’s IP, Raaya: The Great Indian Tales, and our partnership with Canada’s The Knowledge Network to license the multi-award-winning docuseries Rocket Boys, telling the extraordinary story of two pioneering Indian scientists. These events reflect our continued international strategy: taking distinctive Indian stories and premium content to audiences and partners across global markets, while building meaningful connections through stories that have universal appeal.”

Put the two announcements side by side and the strategy is plain. One is a new, family-friendly IP built for global kids’ markets. The other is a prestige drama placed with a respected public broadcaster. Between them, they show a studio spreading its bets across audiences and formats while keeping its identity firmly Indian. For a company turning ten, that is a confident way to mark the occasion.