Welcome to Little India. Six hours from Mumbai.
Somewhere between the first chai on set and the sound of Bhojpuri in a village market, every Indian crew that lands in Mauritius has the same realisation: this island already knows you. Two thirds of Mauritius’ population is of Indian origin. Hindu temples stand in every town beside mosques and churches, Diwali and Maha Shivaratri are public holidays, Hindi and Bhojpuri are spoken across the island, and the food tastes the way food should taste when you are twelve hours into a shooting day and six thousand kilometres from home.
This is why Indian film production in Mauritius works so naturally, and why Identical Media Ltd has made it a specialisation. We are a Mauritius production company and service producer for Bollywood feature films, South Indian productions, streaming series, television commercials, documentaries, music videos and branded content. When Tiger Baby Films brought Netflix’s “The Archies” to the island, and when Luv Films shot “Tu Jhoothi Main Makkaar” here with all of its song sequences, Identical Media was the local partner on the ground. Indian productions are not an occasional guest in our schedule. They are the heart of it.
Little India in the Indian Ocean
Mauritius is the only major filming destination in the world where an Indian production steps off the plane into a culture shaped by India itself. The island’s history brought hundreds of thousands of Indian families here across five generations, and their heritage defines daily life: temple festivals and kirtan evenings, biryani and dholl puri at the street corner, cricket on the radio, and a warmth towards visiting Indian guests that no location brochure can manufacture.
For a production, this cultural familiarity is not decoration. It is logistics:
- Your crew feels at home from day one. Language, food, faith and hospitality all work in your favour, which means morale stays high through long schedules.
- Your story finds its faces. Crowd scenes cast in Mauritius look like India, because the background artists grew up in Indian families. A wedding, a market, a college campus or a festival sequence reads authentically on camera, something no other beach destination can offer.
- Your local partners understand you. From drivers to location managers, working with Indian units is normal here, not exotic.
We understand how Indian productions work
Identical Media’ leadership brings more than 45 years of international production experience and 17 years of servicing productions across Mauritius and the Indian Ocean. Over those years we have serviced more than 100 international productions and learned, on set and in the production office, how Bollywood and South Indian productions actually run.
We plan for Indian production methods from the first budget draft: seven-day weeks, twelve-hour days as the baseline, song units with choreographers and playback, multiple departments moving in parallel, star schedules that shift, and scripts that evolve overnight. When your production manager calls at 22:00 because tomorrow’s scene has changed, our answer is a new location option by morning and a clear note on what the change costs. That is what a specialised Indian production fixer in Mauritius is for.
Respecting the traditions of Indian filmmaking
We know that an Indian production does not simply begin on the first shooting day. It begins properly. We arrange the muhurat and puja ceremony before principal photography, with a local pandit, flowers, coconut and camera blessing, exactly as your production expects it. Equipment and vehicles are blessed before the first take, and when the schedule wraps, we organise the closing ceremony and celebration for cast and crew. Mauritius’ living Hindu culture means these traditions are not improvised here. They are home ground.
Logistics for large Indian units
- Crew and department logistics: parallel workflows for direction, camera, art, costume, choreography, stunts and production, with clear daily movement orders.
- Transportation: crew buses, equipment trucks, star vehicles and airport operations for units of any size.
- Security: location security, crowd control for star appearances, and discreet personal security where needed.
- Production management: experienced local ADs and coordinators, multilingual in English, French, Hindi and Creole, who know Indian working practices.
- Extras and junior artists: sourced from the island’s Indian-origin population in any number, with costume, transport, meals and compliant payment handled by us.
- Specialists on call: licensed armourers with police permits for action scenes, stunt support, marine and underwater units, drone pilots with local aviation clearance, and choreography support for song sequences.
Indian food on set, done properly
Catering makes or breaks a long schedule. Our caterers cook for Indian crews regularly and deliver full vegetarian service as standard, Jain meals prepared to rule, vegan and halal options, and regional preferences from North Indian to South Indian cooking, with rice, sambar and curd on the table when a Chennai unit expects them. Meal timings flex around your shooting pattern, with hot meals at night and chai service running through the day. A well-fed unit is a fast unit, and we treat catering as a department, not an afterthought.
Accommodation for stars, HODs and crew
- For your stars: private luxury villas and five-star resorts with privacy, security and space for entourages, hair and makeup teams and family.
- For HODs and senior crew: four-star comfort close to set.
- For technicians and larger crews: efficient crew hotels and serviced apartments with twin-share options, laundry and late check-out for night shoots.
Airport transfers, SIM cards, per-diem logistics and long-stay rates are organised before your unit lands.
Film equipment rental in Mauritius, without the freight bill
Through our sister company MediaVision, Identical Media operates one of Mauritius’ largest locally owned inventories of professional film equipment: ARRI-certified camera packages, Sony Pro Partner systems, lenses, lighting, grip, drones, sound and full unit equipment. For most Indian productions this means the expensive part of international filming simply disappears: no air freight on twenty flight cases, no carnets, no customs delays, no risk of gear stuck in transit while your unit waits.
Where a production does require specialist equipment from abroad, we handle the importing and customs clearance ourselves, with the paperwork and government liaison that make it fast.
One integrated partner, one lower budget
Identical Media is simultaneously a production services company, an equipment rental house and a film school training the next generation of Mauritian crew. For producers, this integration has a very practical consequence: competitive pricing. Production, equipment and crew development live under one roof, so you are not paying three separate margins, and logistics run through one accountable partner. The result is measurably lower overall production cost and a single phone number when something needs to happen fast.
Complete production services
- Production budgeting: detailed, transparent budgets built on real local rates, customised for every production from a documentary crew of four to a studio feature.
- Location scouting: libraries, recces and location management across the island.
- Permits: filming permits, drone permits, marine and underwater permits, and every government approval your schedule requires.
- Customs and freight assistance for anything that must travel.
- Government liaison: long-standing working relationships with the Mauritius Film Development Corporation, the Economic Development Board and the authorities that keep a production legal and moving.
- Production accounting: compliant cost reporting from day one, structured for the rebate audit.
Locations: an entire subcontinent of looks on one island
Within a 90-minute drive, Mauritius offers more visual variety than most countries deliver in a thousand kilometres: tropical beaches and turquoise lagoons for romance and song sequences, luxury resorts and villas, mountains, gorges and waterfalls, endless sugar-cane fields, colonial architecture and heritage streets, colourful villages, temples and markets that read as India, the modern skyline and harbour of Port Louis, forests, tea plantations and the surreal volcanic landscapes of the south.
One island, one unit move, a dozen worlds. Directors love it. Line producers love it more.
Why Mauritius beats the alternatives
- Safety and stability. Mauritius is one of the safest, most politically stable countries in the region, with reliable infrastructure, excellent hospitals and clean water.
- Short distances. Six hours direct from Mumbai, minimal jet lag, and on the island nothing is more than two hours from anywhere.
- Real film infrastructure. Experienced bilingual crews, an established rental house, marine and drone specialists, and a service producer with international audit standards. Mauritius is not a beautiful place where filming is possible. It is a filming destination that happens to be beautiful.
- The economics. A cash rebate of up to 40%, local equipment that erases freight budgets, and an Indian-origin workforce that removes the hidden costs of cultural friction.
The Mauritius film rebate: up to 40% back, if you play it right
The Mauritius Film Rebate Scheme returns 30% of qualifying local expenditure, rising to 40% for feature films spending USD 1 million or more. The entry thresholds are producer-friendly: USD 100,000 for a foreign feature and just USD 30,000 for a music video — while international TV commercials have no minimum spend at all. Spend USD 1.2 million (about ₹10 crore) in qualifying expenditure on your Mauritius schedule and up to USD 480,000 (about ₹4 crore) can return after audit at the 40% rate. Our team has successfully secured rebates for 27 international productions.
The rebate is claimable only through a Mauritius-registered production company, which is exactly what Identical Media is. And it rewards productions that structure their spend intelligently:
- Book international flights through a Mauritius-registered travel agency and the tickets count towards qualifying local expenditure. Book them abroad and that money earns you nothing. On a large unit, this single decision moves lakhs of rupees into the rebate pool. We arrange it routinely through our partner agencies.
- Structure the schedule to reach the thresholds. A song sequence shot as part of a feature must reach the feature category’s USD 100,000 Mauritius spend to qualify. We plan shooting days, rentals and services so the numbers land where they should.
- Keep the paperwork rebate-ready from day one. The audit at the end is only as smooth as the accounting during the shoot.
Financial planning, payroll and tax: handled professionally
Identical Media provides production accounting, payroll administration for local and visiting crew, cash-flow planning and transparent cost reporting throughout your shoot.
One area deserves particular attention: tax obligations for foreign cast and crew. Mauritius applies withholding and other tax rules to payments made to non-residents, and compliance directly affects your production, because rebate payouts depend on a clean tax record. The applicable treatment varies with contract structure, residency status and the double-taxation agreement between Mauritius and India, so reputable guidance matters more than rules of thumb. We structure contracts and payroll compliantly, work with qualified Mauritian tax advisers, and confirm the exact obligations for your specific production during onboarding, before they can ever surprise your budget or delay your rebate.
This is the quiet difference between a location and a partner: anyone can show you a beach. We make sure the money comes back.
Indian productions we have serviced
“The Archies”, Netflix | Tiger Baby Films. Five-week feature schedule in Mauritius: locations, permits, crew, equipment and full on-island production management for one of India’s most prestigious production houses.
“Tu Jhoothi Main Makkaar”, Luv Films LLP. Full service production for Luv Ranjan and Ankur Garg’s box-office hit, including its Mauritius song sequences.
“Sign of Good and Bad – Selfi II”, S Vistas Ltd, Chennai. A crime thriller by a Chennai production house with Tamil heads of department in direction, cinematography, music, stunts and colour, working with Mauritian cast and our local crew. Released theatrically in Mauritius in 2023.
Music video, Jolly Motion Pictures, Mumbai. A four-day music video shoot for one of India’s leading labels: Sony FX6 packages, Ronin 2, full lighting, drone unit and crew, delivered through Identical Media and MediaVision.
Also trusted by: Netflix (approved vendor), Procter & Gamble (Preferred Production Partner since 2009), BBC, National Geographic, Disney+, ZDF and Showmax.
A special invitation to the South
Hindi cinema knows Mauritius, but this island belongs just as much to Chennai, Hyderabad, Bengaluru and Kochi. South Indian cinema is today the largest film engine in India, and Mauritius is built for it: Tamil is part of the island’s own heritage, South Indian temples and cuisine are everywhere, and the pan-India scale of Telugu and Tamil productions fits our infrastructure and our rebate perfectly. The 40% band for features spending USD 1 million or more was made for exactly the budgets the South is shooting now.
We have already proven it works. “Sign of Good and Bad – Selfi II” was produced here by Chennai’s S Vistas Ltd with Tamil heads of department, working seamlessly with Mauritian cast and our local crew. Tamil, Telugu, Kannada and Malayalam producers receive the same specialised service as any Bollywood unit, and the same welcome: this island will feel like home to your crew too.
Bring your story to Mauritius
Send us your script pages, your rough schedule and your budget range. Within days you will receive location suggestions, a first budget built on real local rates, and a rebate estimate that already includes the structuring most producers discover too late. From the puja on day one to the audit that pays your rebate, Identical Media is your production partner in Mauritius.
