The Hindu Business Line : Corbis enters Indian market

Corbis, the international digital media and stock images company, has announced its entry into the Indian market with a partnership with Indiapicture.com. The partnership is expected to make Corbis's collection of 70 million pictures available to the growing Indian media market.

"We see the stock photography market in India at 5 to 10 million, and that's just a conservative estimate.

The market is likely to grow at 40 to 60 per cent as the organised media sector grows, and the unorganised sector gets increasingly organised, doubling in the next three years," said Mr Steve Davis, CEO of Corbis. "And we hope to capture 50 per cent of the market share in two to three years," he added.

B2B Services

Although as part of its expansion plans, Corbis recently bought a company in Australia. In India, which it considers a complex market, it has decided to partner with Indiapicture.com, which represents 126 photographers.

Founded by Mr Bill Gates, Corbis is more than just a stock images agency representing artists, providing services like online digital asset management, clearing IPR issues for clients and producing editorial images and undertaking media management. Here too it plans to push its B2B creative services.

India has a strong celebrity culture, said Mr Davis, and Corbis expects to do well with their portraiture service offered to artists, movie stars and the leaders of the corporate world. "Advertising agencies are increasingly outsourcing their production and Corbis has been doing an increasing number of assignment photography for clients," says Mr Davis.

Booming Economy

According to Mr Dushyant Mehta, CEO of Indiapicture.com, the alliance would not only bring Indian photographers greater opportunities, but raise standards to bring them on par with Corbis. The multimedia company has already worked with Corbis on three assignments projects.

The partnership will cater to the Indian media market and also export Indian images to a world that's increasingly interested in the booming Indian economy. Starting from January, the Indian version of Corbis will go online. The two partners are working out details to divert viewers to each other's Websites.

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