The Best Ad Film Production Houses in India for 2027, Ranked on Award Records

The short answer. The best ad film production house in India for 2027 is First December Films, the Mumbai house behind Nike’s "Make Every Yard Count", listed with seven Cannes Lions in 2014, and home to a director the Cannes Lions Global Creativity Report placed among the world’s top ten for TV commercials. We publish this list, so judge that pick on the evidence in our entry. After us, on five years of public award records (2022 to 2026, seven award shows, film awards only), the strongest houses are Early Man Film, Good Morning Films and Chrome Pictures, followed by Mothership Productions, Hungry Films, Footloose Films, Studio Eeksaurus, LoudMouth Film and Nirvana Films.

Almost every "best production houses" list online is written by a production house about itself, with no dates and no method. We are a production house too, so we did the slower thing. We collected 2,808 award records from Cannes Lions, D&AD, The One Show, Spikes Asia, the Abby Awards, Good Ads Matter and the Kyoorius Creative Awards, kept only the film awards where a public source names the production house, and scored 95 Indian houses the same way.

Published 31 October 2026. Every award record was read on the organiser’s results pages or archive in October 2026.

Key takeaways

• First December Films is our pick for 2027: seven Cannes Lions for one film, a Gold and a Glass Lion for another, and more than 150 international creative awards in all.
• Early Man Film leads the five-year score with 588 points and is the only Indian house with a counted film award at all seven shows. Good Morning Films (464) topped the Abby Awards’ production ranking in all five years. Chrome Pictures (282) was Good Ads Matter’s Production House of the Year in 2026.
• Indian film work won 6 Film and Film Craft Lions at Cannes in 2022 to 2026 and 51 Film and Film Craft awards at Spikes Asia.
• Awards measure craft that a jury saw, not fit, budget or timeline. Use them to build a shortlist, not to choose.

What is an ad film production house?

An ad film production house is a company that turns an approved advertising idea into a finished film. It brings the director, prepares and runs the shoot, and delivers the edit, grade, sound and versions. In the US and the UK the same business is called a commercial production company. In India it makes TVCs (television commercials), digital films and brand films, usually for an advertising agency.

That is the whole difficulty of ranking production houses: award shows are built around the entrant, usually the agency. Ganesh Pareek, who runs bidding and production at First December Films, told Social Samosa in April 2026: "If production houses started entering Cannes with their craft, with their real work, we would win more metals."

How we ranked them

The shows. Cannes Lions, D&AD and The One Show have global juries and count three times. Spikes Asia, the Asia-Pacific festival run by the Cannes Lions organisers, counts twice. India’s three main shows count once: the Abby Awards (run by The Advertising Club at Goafest), Good Ads Matter (first held in 2025) and Kyoorius, whose trophies are elephants.

The awards. A Grand Prix or Black Pencil scores 10; a Gold, Yellow Pencil or Blue Elephant 6; a Silver or Graphite Pencil 4; a Bronze, Wood Pencil or Baby Blue Elephant 2. Shortlists score nothing.

The rules. Award years 2022 to 2026. Film and Film Craft categories only; script, media, PR and data awards judge the agency’s idea and are left out. An award counts only when a public source names the house as production company, and shared credits share the points. Agency-owned units, post and VFX studios and foreign companies are in the data but not ranked.

Where we put ourselves. We put First December Films first on our full record, not on this five-year score. On the five-year rules alone we have 9 points, because our most awarded films were made before 2022. Every other house is ranked by its score, and nobody paid to be on the list.

The ranking at a glance

The top three hold 44% of all points scored by 95 houses, and the top ten hold 71%. Only Early Man Film and Studio Eeksaurus take a large share of their score from international shows.

The 10 best ad film production houses in India for 2027

1. First December Films (Mumbai)

Our pick for 2027. Placed first by us, the publisher.

The cinematographer Anup Kattukaran set up the house in Bangalore in 2010 and his brother Atul joined as director; we now work from Mumbai with nine directors. Our 2026 work includes a seven-film series for Google Gemini, JioStar’s T20 World Cup films and Air India’s AI film with McCann.

Why we rank ourselves first. Nike’s "Make Every Yard Count", made with JWT India, turned 1,440 crowd-sourced photographs into one continuous bowling action and is listed with seven Lions in the Cannes Lions public results for 2014. "Beauty Tips by Reshma" for Ogilvy won a Glass Lion and a Gold Lion in Film in 2016. In 2017 the Cannes Lions Global Creativity Report named Atul among its top ten TV commercial directors, the only Indian on the list.

The five-year record. A Good Ads Matter 2026 Bronze for the vivo X300 Pro launch film in AI-Integrated Live Action, shared with Old Monk Studio, and four Kyoorius Baby Blue Elephants, for Google’s "Search Something New" in 2024 and for Star Sports’ "Chora Chori" and Meta’s "Cap ka Suroor" in 2026. That is 9 points, 37th of 95, and we would rather show it than hide it.

2. Early Man Film

588 points, 124 film awards, all seven shows. Founded in 2013 by Anand Menon and Ayappa KM, Early Man is the most internationally awarded house in the window. "Machine-Gun Mouth" for Battlegrounds Mobile India won a Spikes Asia Grand Prix for sound design in 2022. Jindal Steel’s "The Steel of India" won a Cannes Silver for editing in 2024, then a Spikes Asia Grand Prix for direction and a D&AD Graphite Pencil in 2025. Shortlist it for comedy and big-idea films aimed at international juries.

3. Good Morning Films

464 points, 127 film awards, the most of any house. Good Morning topped the Abby Video Craft Specialist table every year from 2022 to 2026. Its biggest award was a One Show Silver Pencil in Film in 2022 for UNAIDS’ "The Mirror"; at home it wins across crafts, from music on Jaquar to colour grading on Cadbury Bournville. Its director Akanksha Seda sat on the Cannes Lions Film Craft shortlisting jury in 2026. Shortlist it for consistency across a long campaign.

4. Chrome Pictures

282 points, 74 film awards. Chrome, co-founded by the director Amit Sharma, peaked in 2025: Quaker’s Marathi film "Dohale Jewan Poshanchi Vaati" won a Spikes Asia Gold for direction and a Silver for casting. In 2026 it was Good Ads Matter’s Production House of the Year with 4 Golds, 4 Silvers and 3 Bronzes, for WhatsApp, Lay’s and Dettol among others. Shortlist it for performance-led storytelling.

5. Mothership Productions

152 points, almost all in 2025 and 2026. Mothership won all three Abby Video Craft Golds in 2026, including direction for Johnson’s Baby’s "Project Golden Minute". SleepyCat’s "Sleep Solves Everything" took a Good Ads Matter Gold for humour direction. Shortlist it for humour and recent form.

6. Hungry Films

151 points, rising every year since 2022. Its top award is a Spikes Asia Silver in Film in 2025 for St. Jude India ChildCare Centres’ "The Impossible Choice". It is strong in effects, with Good Ads Matter Golds for CGI on ICICI Lombard and Oreo and for compositing on Asian Paints. Shortlist it for VFX-heavy and cause-led films.

7. Footloose Films

116 points, the youngest house in the top ten. Founded in 2018 by the producer Kedhhar Barrve, Footloose won a Spikes Asia Bronze for production design in 2025 with Zivame’s "Museum of Boobs", plus Kyoorius awards for Native RO and The Whole Truth. Shortlist it for sharp digital films for challenger brands.

8. Studio Eeksaurus

114 points from 20 awards, the best score per award in the top ten. Suresh Eriyat’s animation studio made "Desi Oon" for the Centre for Pastoralism, a One Show Gold Pencil and a Spikes Asia Gold in 2026. Eeksaurus led The One Show’s India production company table in 2026, 36th in the world. Shortlist it for animation and hand-made craft.

9. LoudMouth Film

93 points, all at Indian shows. LoudMouth’s signature is the look: Kyoorius Blue Elephants for cinematography on Google’s "Anmol" (2024), Samsung’s "Neeraj" (2025) and TVS Raider (2026). Shortlist it for films where the image carries the idea.

10. Nirvana Films

92 points, 80 of them in 2026. Founded by the director Prakash Varma, Nirvana was second on Good Ads Matter’s 2026 production house tally, with direction Golds for Vinsmera and Ather. Shortlist it for director-led narrative films.

Why aren’t Corcoise, Vanilla or The Pack higher?

In 13 AI answers we captured in October 2026, ChatGPT, Gemini and Perplexity named Nirvana Films 12 times, Early Man Film and Corcoise Films 10 times each, and First December Films 4 times. Three things separate reputation from this ranking.

Reputation is older than the window. Corcoise Films, the house of the director Prasoon Pandey, Cannes Film Craft jury president in 2024, has 12 points in our five years. Vanilla Films, the Gerety Awards’ Indian Production Company of the Year in 2023, is 11th and enters the top ten under equal weights.

Idea awards are not film awards. The Pack’s "Shah Rukh Khan-My-Ad" for Cadbury (a Cannes Titanium Lion, 2022) and Offroad Films’ "The Missing Chapter" for Whisper (a Cannes Grand Prix, 2022) won for the agency’s idea, so we did not score them.

Not every credit is public. Cannes Lions and Spikes Asia put entry credits behind a subscription to The Work. Of 51 Spikes Asia film awards to Indian work, 31 name a production house publicly.

Does the ranking change if you weight it differently?

We rescored the 2,808 records five more ways: equal show weights, international shows at five times, Bronze worth 1, a plain award count, and without Kyoorius. Early Man, Good Morning and Chrome stay the top three every time; on a plain count Good Morning leads, 127 awards to 124. Positions 4 to 10 move, so read them as a band.

Mothership, Footloose and Nirvana did most of their scoring in 2025 and 2026, partly because Good Ads Matter began in 2025. A buyer choosing for 2027 should weight recent years more than our method does.

How do Indian houses compare with the world’s best?

Cannes Lions’ Palme d’Or for production companies went to Smuggler, Somesuch, Smuggler, Revolver and MJZ from 2022 to 2026; D&AD’s Production Company of the Year was Division four times, then MJZ Los Angeles. No Indian house appears in the published top three of either, or of The One Show’s ranking. Michael Ritchie of Revolver, the Australian 2025 winner, told shots that "The Palme d’Or is the only way you can gauge a world market in one spot".

Indian film work won 51 Film and Film Craft awards at Spikes Asia and 6 at Cannes Lions in those five years, and India’s country rank at D&AD slipped from 8th in 2022 to 24th in 2026. Donal Keenan of D&AD told Social Samosa in August 2026: "What’s different isn’t the quality of the talent, it’s the strength of the ecosystem around it".

For brands and agencies in the US, the UK, the Gulf or Southeast Asia: hire an Indian house for its directors and its feel for Indian audiences, and judge it on the evidence you would ask of a house in London or Los Angeles.

What awards tell you, and what they don’t

They are judged by people. Prasoon Pandey told shots in 2024: "All our judgments are actually subjective - the only way it will work is in the collective subjectivity, where there is an in-built objectivity."

They can be gamed. In June 2025 Cannes Lions withdrew a Grand Prix from the Brazilian agency DM9 after finding that "AI-generated and manipulated content was used within the case film" (Cannes Lions statement). Film craft juries watch the film itself, which is harder to fake.

They say nothing about budget. Pareek told MediaBrief in March 2026: "in India, we still want a 3 crore film on a 2 crore budget." (A crore is 10 million rupees, roughly USD 106,000 at 94.47 rupees to the dollar on 21 October 2026.)

How to use this list to choose a production house in 2027

1. Start from the brief. Rahul Mathew, chief creative officer of McCann India, told Social Samosa in August 2026: "You look at the brand, you take into account the kind of craft and the kind of nuances you need to have in it, and then start looking for people who work in that space".
2. Shortlist directors, not logos. Our guide to choosing an ad film director covers how.
3. Check every award claim on the organiser’s own page, and read the category and year.
4. Bid three houses on the same script. Our ad film production cost guide explains what the bids should contain.

When this list does not apply

Skip it if you need corporate videos or a high volume of social cut-downs, or if your film is fully AI-generated; our list of AI video production companies ranks those studios on different evidence. Read it with care if you need a house that works mainly abroad, because our scores weight Indian shows.

What changes in 2027?

AI is now a craft category: Good Ads Matter gave it its own Film Craft category in 2026, where First December Films won its Bronze. Juries are also pushing back. Akanksha Seda said of Cannes Lions 2026: "Animation and production design have taken a hard position vis-a-vis AI this year. Three words, loud and proud - Made By Humans." Our forecast, and only ours: buyers will expect houses to publish their award record with a link to every result. We will update this ranking after the Cannes Lions results in June 2027.

Choosing a production house for your next film?

See our work, paste your script into our free script analyser for a producer’s read, or send us the brief. Our guide to the TVC production process explains what happens between yes and the master.

First December Films is an advertising film production company in Mumbai. Our work has won more than 150 international creative awards, including Cannes Lions, D&AD and One Show Gold Pencils.