[Exclusive] Susumu Fukunaga Talks About Pokémon’s Participation In IIT Bombay Techfest 2025

The evening sky over IIT Bombay lit up this December with fan favorites Pikachu, Charizard, and the magic of Pokémon. As a part of the twenty ninth version of Techfest, India witnessed its first-ever Pokémon drone present. It was a stunning spectacle that marked a major milestone for the model within the nation.

Amidst the joy of the “Pokémon Fiesta,” which drew 1000’s of scholars and followers to the campus, we sat down with Susumu Fukunaga, Company Officer at The Pokémon Firm.

From discussing the strategic significance of faculty communities to hinting at potential future collaborations — and even sharing his private favourite Pokémon—Fukunaga shared deep insights into the corporate’s imaginative and prescient for the Indian market.

The Pokémon Firm hosted a Pokémon mini-marathon at Jio World Backyard and are again now at IIT Bombay Techfest. Why are IIT Bombay and school campuses essential for Pokémon in India? What makes a tech competition like Techfest particular in comparison with different occasions held in malls or cities?

Fukunaga: This specific occasion at IIT Bombay is principally focused at school college students. We really feel that faculties or universities are locations the place it’s very simple to develop communities. Individuals get along with frequent pursuits and luxuriate in what all of them like—their passions. We hope that individuals will get collectively for Pokémon and luxuriate in Pokémon collectively. Other than school college students, we additionally heard that lots of people who reside close by additionally attend this occasion. Our hope is that we can attain these individuals by this occasion as properly, and they’ll additionally have the ability to get pleasure from it.

In your 27 years with Pokémon, what’s the one second of feat in The Pokémon Firm that makes you the happiest? Why is that achievement essential to you?

Fukunaga: I’ve been concerned in lots of tasks thus far within the final 27 years. There was the PokéPark challenge in 2005. And there was     Pokémon Air Adventures, which is principally wrapping a complete plane with a Pokémon-themed design, which occurred in 2022. All of those initiatives      have been massive and really near my coronary heart. However a very powerful factor from all of the occasions that we do, together with this one, is to see individuals having fun with themselves and seeing their smiles. As a result of in any case, Pokémon, even when we name it video games or anime or no matter it’s, we contemplate it to be leisure, and we would like individuals to be entertained. Seeing them having fun with it, seeing them being entertained, is what makes me happiest.

Relating to the way in which you wrap total plane with Pokémon, will that occur in India sooner or later?

Fukunaga: “We’d like to” is the reply, however we don’t actually know when as of now. If any airways in India have an interest on this concept, we’d be blissful to have a dialogue with them.               

Do you see India turning into one of the essential markets for Pokémon, like North America or Japan? What would it not imply if India turns into as massive as these markets? Having labored in India for therefore lengthy, what are your learnings about Indian tradition and the way Indian individuals love Pokémon? Has that modified your perspective on Pokémon?

Fukunaga: To begin with, I want to inform you that our company mission is to complement individuals’s lives the world over, each in the actual world in addition to the digital world. We really feel that our content material hasn’t actually reached the individuals of India utterly but, so our first goal is to really get our content material to them as a lot as attainable and to as many individuals as attainable.

Like I mentioned, our mission is to complement as many individuals’s lives as attainable the world over, and as , India has one of many largest populations on this planet. If we’re in a position to entertain increasingly individuals in India, that takes us nearer to our mission. Speaking about Indian followers, I really feel that Indians actually worth their group, whether or not it’s region-based or family-based. It’s quite a bit about group so far as their life and tradition are involved. For instance, if there’s a competition, everybody will get collectively to have fun that competition. I really feel that tradition is very nice, and I actually respect it. When individuals get collectively as a group to get pleasure from themselves and get all enthusiastic about issues, we’d like it if Pokémon might additionally turn out to be part of that surroundings.

Persevering with that prepare of thought, Pokémon has featured many alternative ethnicities in its media, be it video games or anime. Might Indian designers and artists assist create new Pokémon character designs or maps based mostly on Indian themes or types? Can we see Indian tradition integrated into future Pokémon media? Is that this one thing you’d wish to see?

Fukunaga: There are quite a lot of various factors that turn out to be motifs in our content material, whether or not it’s video games or anime. As a result of we’re an India-centric branding and advertising and marketing workforce, we aren’t straight concerned within the artistic aspect of it. Nevertheless, we do consider that as a result of India is a large market and we do need individuals to get pleasure from our content material, there could also be future prospects based mostly on that. However as a branding workforce, we’re not actively concerned in that facet.

Bodily Pokémon playing cards have turn out to be collector’s objects, fetching enormous quantities when offered or traded. Might Pokémon Buying and selling Card Recreation Pocket playing cards—these digital playing cards—sooner or later be as beneficial as bodily playing cards? Will The Pokémon Firm contemplate having them as NFTs on any blockchain?

Fukunaga: As of now, we have now no intention of turning our digital playing cards into NFTs, so I can clearly say that that’s not the plan. Digital playing cards are principally accessible to everyone, so there may be hardly any chance that their costs or worth would go up drastically. Even when they did, there may be actually no approach to change them or get the worth out of them, so we don’t anticipate that to occur.

What plans does The Pokémon Firm have for India sooner or later?

Fukunaga: To be trustworthy, we don’t actually have a transparent map of what we wish to do in India but. However as we mentioned earlier, we would like increasingly individuals to get pleasure from Pokémon content material, and there’s quite a lot of our content material that we nonetheless haven’t even been in a position to launch within the nation. To begin with, we expect that our job is to create a stable basis based mostly on which we will launch all of the content material in India, and that’s the place we’re heading.

I’ve a query I want to ask in Japanese. A lightweight-hearted one: Fukunaga-san no ichiban suki na Pokémon wa donna Pokémon desu ka? (What’s your favorite Pokémon, Fukunaga-san?)

Fukunaga: (Laughs) My favourite Pokémon is Mew. As , it’s a really mysterious Pokémon, and it’s one of many first mysterious Pokémon that was launched, so I prefer it as a result of it’s mysterious.