The Hindu Business Line : Genpact, NDTV form joint venture

Business process outsourcing company Genpact (formerly GE Capital International Services) and broadcaster NDTV have announced a 50:50 joint venture to offer media outsourcing services to enterprises worldwide in areas such as editing, digitisation and closed captioning.

"Currently 70 per cent of all media work is digital and virtually 70 per cent of this can be outsourced. In some ways, the media world is currently at an inflection point similar to the Y2K phenomenon, as decades of analogue experience is being converted to digital from major process-based operations to high-end functionality," Mr Pramod Bhasin, President and CEO of Genpact, said at a conference.

The venture aims at combining NDTV's brand image, domain knowledge and media skill sets with Genpact's offshore experience, global delivery capabilities, sales and marketing infrastructure, and operational expertise. According to PricewaterhouseCoopers, the global media entertainment industry is currently estimated at $1,340 billion and is expected to grow to $1,777 billion by the end of 2009.

"In addition, there are a number of drivers that are changing the dynamics for the industry, such as the increasing prevalence of high-definition TV, digital content and on-demand programming.

"This has created a need for media companies to ensure that their content is digitised and available for customers to access and use.

"There is also pressure on media companies globally to cut costs and outsourcing is one of the established means to achieve this," Dr Prannoy Roy, Chairman of NDTV, said.

According to Dr Roy, the outsourcing of media services could work out to 20-50 per cent of the US cost, when done in locations like India.

The alliance would deliver the services from Gurgaon, Mr Bhasin. But he declined to divulge the investments being pumped into the venture or the revenue projections for the new operations.

"We will soon identify the management team and appoint the CEO for the new venture," he said.

While the current range of services for media and broadcasting industry include digitisation, editing and archiving, these could be extended to serve the animation industry also.

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