The global market research industry has been under strain with budget cuts and layoffs seen in the past 1-2 years. The impact of recession on the market research industry has also had a spillover effect on the Indian offshore market research vendors that has made vendors go beyond standard market research service offerings (Market Intelligence)

However of late we are seeing acquisitions and funding in the Indian offshoring service providers. Global knowledge services provider Integreon recently took over Grail Research. The company is a global strategic research and decision support firm, part of the US-based management consulting company, Monitor Group. With the global market research industry laying low for a while, it does provide Indian knowledge services and large IT/BPO players opportunities to acquire or form strategic partnership with onshore service providers. Indian onshore knowledge services providers have grown in the past 2-3 years in terms of scale and services maturity. Few of the larger players have established relationships with large clientele and are moving towards a more advisory role which has always been played by prominent market research companies like AC Nielsen, Synovate, TNS, Ipsos etc.

Apart from the larger market research companies, the global market research industry is filled with small and niche companies that have build capabilities in specific service lines. With offshore service providers attaining significant size and financial strength, will we see more acquisitions in the knowledge services space??