India’s Silent Media Revolution

India has gone from being the world’s back office, handling customer support calls of first-world countries, to powering tech for Fortune 500 companies. It has now even gone to the moon. But is it seen as a creative force to reckon with when it comes to media? No.

Let me try to change your mind. Did you know

• At Cannes 2022, an Indian agency (Webchutney) won the best agency of the year (worldwide)?
• Indians were behind a lot of VFX done for Marvel’s Avengers & Harry Potter
• Global companies are setting up their media, design and creative delivery centers in the country. 

Silently, India is becoming a media outsourcing hub. And it’s on track to become a world leader.

Why is this happening? There are 3 reasons;

1) Talent model is changing

2) The India Advantage

3) Traditional agency model is fading

Let me unpack them further.

You see, the post-covid world has been perfectly poised for remote working. Today robust remote infrastructure makes collaboration a breeze. Because of this Fortune 500 CEOs, as cited by this BCG + Harvard report, are rethinking their entire talent stack by leveraging a distributed workforce.

I like to think of it as insourcing the core and outsourcing the chore. This ensures that the internal team focuses on long term strategy while spontaneous execution is spearheaded by experts.

This not only helps with scale but also makes organizations more flexible. Think about it, there’s a paradigm shift in the way content is created and consumed. Data is at the heart of this change. Thus, in a data-driven world, a brand may need 500 videos in one month, but just one video in the next month. This agility is impossible to achieve in-house, or even with a larger agency. An on-demand talent strategy, on the other hand, makes it possible to onboard 50 video specialists in the first month and deboard them the next.

Sporadic and ever changing client needs like these are core reasons for the big agency model to fade. Truth is, modern marketing needs scale and variety. And traditional agencies were built for neither. Static in-house teams cannot cater to variety, and scale often translates to more people, more expenses and higher client billing. Far from feasible.

That’s why brands now increasingly prefer adding independent talents and teams to the workforce VS building bloated in-house teams or onboarding big agencies.

When it comes to nimble talent such as this, India leads the way with its massive, varied and flexible talent pool. India plays host to the largest pool of freelancers worldwide.

With boundaries melting in the digiverse, global companies are turning to India for its high quality, innate understanding and use of English, keen sense of the global context and to top it all, its cost-effectiveness. Making it the leading choice for all outsourced creative work in the world.

My work with independent creatives fills me with hope. My first-hand brush with Indian creatives, the way they work, their resilience and responsiveness tell me that we’re writing the winning formula.

India has the right talent at the right place at the right time. The world is changing the way it works, and India is leveraging its superpowers to become a media and creative leader.

Kavan Antani has always had a passion for creating things from scratch. Whether it’s graphics, event IPs, or companies, Kavan pursued design and animation in the 8th grade, established a freelance business in school, and launched a startup by the time he was 18.

Over the last 10 years, Kavan Antani has dedicated his life to building IndieFolio. His primary goal has been to support top independent creative talent and teams, helping thousands of Indian creatives work from their homes.

Kavan believes that India is experiencing a creative and media renaissance, and he envisions that Indians & independent talent will play a defining role in the future of work.

Kavan Antani enjoys engaging with students and has been a part of 100+ design juries, portfolio reviews, and entrepreneurship workshops at various colleges such as NID, Srishti, MITID, and more.

If you want to discuss freelance, design, the future of work, or startups, feel free to reach out to Kavan Antani on kavan@indiefolio.com or LinkedIn.