Media outsourcing in the visual media domain is gaining traction in India with big outsourcing service providers like Infosys BPO, the outsourcing service providing arm of Infosys (Nasdaq:INFY) and Genpact (NYSE:G) having already ventured into the space.    

Infosys BPO has recently teamed up with a local media company TV18 to launch a media process outsourcing company called Source18. The strategic alliance plans to offer a range of services to media and entertainment companies globally. Source18 has already got a big account to handle form National Geographic. Genpact had inked a deal with another local media company NDTV some months back to provide similar services in the media outsourcing space.

The Market Size
Estimates suggest that the global media and entertainment industry revenue is likely to shoot up to $2 trillion by 2008 from $1.3 trillion in 2005. This marks a huge jump and is led primarily by the proliferation of content in multiple formats across media platforms. The media process outsourcing opportunity is huge since most of the existing contents worldwide are in the analogue form and they need to be digitized for new platforms.

The Drivers
More than 70 per cent of the work on media companies is digital in nature and all of them can be outsourced. The outsourceability provides a sizeable opportunity for the third party vendors to tap. The outsourceability as mentioned by a media expert arises from the fact that the global media industry is “currently at an inflection point similar to Y2K phenomenon as decades of analog is being converted to digital from major process based operations to high-end functionality".

Cost savings is a prime driver of media services outsourcing. Work in India can be done cheaper by around 20-30 per cent. Besides cost, availability of skilled manpower and scalability are the key drivers.

Services Outsourced
Services outsourced are usually in the areas of editing, digitization and closed captioning, archiving and metatagging, re-purposing content, etc. Source18 provides plans to provide re-purposing of current as well as archival content for the mobile platform.

The Way Forward
While the outsourcing of media services to India is at an initial stage, with big outsourcing service providers getting into the fray and increasing digitization needs, requirement for such service is bound to increase.