Monday, September 13, 2004
Offbeat Outsourcing
Beneficiaries of the outsourcing trend are now not limited to call centres and software engineers. During my trip to India, it came to my attention that some non-traditional industries are now growing thanks to business from the West. Rina Chandran, a journalist and a friend, writes on how Indian animators have benefitted.
Cute cartoon characters and slick special effects may not seem obvious candidates for outsourcing, but Indian studios are popping up alongside software firms and call centres that do work for firms in the West. In films, television shows and electronic games, latecomer India has started to gain favour over more established animation centres such as Taiwan, Singapore, South Korea and the Philippines.
India is winning animation contracts for the same reasons it has become such a hot outsourcing destination for other industries: lower costs, a large English-speaking workforce and a track record in meeting Western companies' technology needs.
While language and technology remain advantages even in some of these creative sectors, the bottleneck might be the supply of skill (after all, how many training centres are dedicated to animation?). An area where this is not a problem is in financial research. With greater interest in small and mid-cap stocks, a large number of such stocks on the American exchanges and skilled indian management graduates, it is not surprising that small cap equity research is also finding its way on the outsourcing bandwagon.
Does anyone know of more non-traditional outsourcing trends?
Cute cartoon characters and slick special effects may not seem obvious candidates for outsourcing, but Indian studios are popping up alongside software firms and call centres that do work for firms in the West. In films, television shows and electronic games, latecomer India has started to gain favour over more established animation centres such as Taiwan, Singapore, South Korea and the Philippines.
India is winning animation contracts for the same reasons it has become such a hot outsourcing destination for other industries: lower costs, a large English-speaking workforce and a track record in meeting Western companies' technology needs.
While language and technology remain advantages even in some of these creative sectors, the bottleneck might be the supply of skill (after all, how many training centres are dedicated to animation?). An area where this is not a problem is in financial research. With greater interest in small and mid-cap stocks, a large number of such stocks on the American exchanges and skilled indian management graduates, it is not surprising that small cap equity research is also finding its way on the outsourcing bandwagon.
Does anyone know of more non-traditional outsourcing trends?
