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INDIA TARGETS MEDIA AS NEXT OFFSHORING MARKET
Jo Johnson

For virtualy everyone in TV except the celebrity news anchor, it will be a sobering thought.
According to two of the most ambitious companies in India, nearly half the industry should logically be relocated to the subcontinent.
Genpact, the largest provider of offshore outsourcing services in India and 33 per cent owned by General Electric, has allied with New Delhi Television, a leading broadcaster, in a 50-50 joint venture that breaks fresh ground for the industry.
Their new venture will initially target costly technical, editing and production functions in the audio-visual segment of the industry in the latest sign of the growing threat to media jobs in the US and Europe from low-cost offshore locations.
They will initially market their services to studios and TV networks looking to lower the cost of digitising libraries of old analogue programmes - creating graphics and subtitles, editing of raw footage, tagging material and archiving programmes.
In an interview, Prannoy Roy, NDTV's chairman, said 70 per cent of the global media and entertainment industry, valued by PwC at £770bn ($1.3bn) in 2005, could be digitised, of which 70 per cent could be outsourced, potentially offshore to India.

The relocation of highvalue media jobs to India has started to take off in other segments of the industry. Reuters, the global information group, moved 200 jobs to a new facility in Bangalore inaugurated in October 2004.
Hollywood's animated film industry has also shifted significant business to India. Recent blockbusters including Shrek 2, Spiderman 2 and The Chronicles of Narnia benefited from India-based animators and visual effects specialists.
«For a one-hour programme you might shoot for 60 hours and have to cut 57 hours of rubbish before you have to make any real creative decisions,» says Mr Roy.
«Hiring someone in New York will cost $140 an hour, compared with $20 here,» he says.
Pramond Bhasin, chief executive of Genpact, which was spun off from GE in 2004, expects there to be scepticism over whether showbiz will lend itself to the type of process re-engineering that has transformed other sectors.

The new business line will help Genpact in its drive to reduce its dependence on GE, which accounted for about 95 per cent of its revenues in 2005. Mr Bhasin aims to reduce that to 75 per cent by the end of this year. He expects sales of $615m in 2006.
Mr Roy expects the new venture within a few years to be the same size as his existing news business, which had sales of about $40m last year and has a market capitalisation of almost $330m. «This will be as big as our current business is very fast,» he says. «We're not offshoring anchors yet, but anything behind the camera should no longer be done onshore.»

JO JOHNSON
Tratto dal «Financial Times» del 3 aprile


  • Analogue programmes: trasmissioni in analogico
  • Anchor(man/woman/person): conduttore, conduttrice (di notiziari televisivi)
  • Animated film industry: industria del cinema di animazione
  • Animators: animatori
  • Audio-visual segment: segmento audiovisivo
  • Blockbusters: pellicole di grande successo
  • Broadcaster: emittente televisiva
  • Business line: area di attivitą dell'azienda
  • (To) Digitise: digitalizzare
  • Editing functions: funzioni di montaggio
  • Entertainment industry: industria dello spettacolo
  • Global information group: gruppo globale del settore dell'informazione
  • Joint venture: impresa in partecipazione
  • Low-cost offshore locations: localizzazioni all'estero a basso costo
  • (To) Market: mettere sul mercato
  • Market capitalization: valore di mercato totale di una societą, capitalizzazione di mercato
  • Media industry: industria dei mezzi di comunicazione
  • Media jobs: posti di lavoro degli operatori dei mezzi di comunicazione
  • News business: attivitą nel settore dell'industria dell'informazione
  • Offshore outsourcing services: servizi di esternalizzazione all'estero
  • Onshore: in patria
  • (To) Outsource: esternalizzare
  • Process re-engineering: riprogettazione/reingegnerizzazione dei processi
  • Provider: fornitore
  • Raw footage: riprese grezze
  • (To) Relocate: trasferire
  • Revenues: entrate
  • (To) Shoot: girare, fare riprese
  • Showbiz: industria dello spettacolo
  • (To) Spin off: scorporare (una societą)
  • Studios: studi (televisivi)
  • (To) Tag: etichettare
  • TV networks: reti televisive
  • Venture: iniziativa imprenditoriale
  • Visual effects specialists: esperti degli effetti speciali