Adlabs goes after the restoration outsourcing business

Outsourcing of work might not be popular right now, but it is a fact of business life in the global economy. And few businesses are as ripe for BPO (business process outsourcing) as restoration and image processing. Adlabs/Reliance has recognised this fact and is making a major play for this segment, based on the triple strength of, a) Lowry Digital's reputaiton and relations in Hollywood, coupled with, 2) a global fibre optic network, and now also, 3) a mega-size operation in India for handling enormous amounts of content.

From the press release:

Adlabs Films Limited, a member of the Reliance Anil Dhirubhai Ambani Group today announced their establishing a BPO business for the media space.

Adlabs Films’ BPO will be one of the world’s largest comprehensive digital restoration and content processing services facilities. Spread over 90,000 sq ft, it will employ 1200 employees within a year and will comply with MPAA (Motion Pictures Association of America) standards.

The BPO is aimed at providing a comprehensive one point solution for the transition from Analog to Digital and Physical Media to Digital Data.

The BPO has already commenced business with 300 employees and has recently obtained a prestigious order for digitization and digital restoration of 1000 films preserved by the National Film Archive of India (NFAI), Pune, a media unit of the Ministry of Information & Broadcasting, Government of India.

This operation will cover much more than just restoration:

The services of the BPO include: Restoration, Encoding, Transcoding, Compression Authoring, Format & Standards Conversion, Duplication & Dubs, Meta tagging, Repurposing/Versioning, QC & Broadcast Logistics and Archiving.

My boss was interviewed by The Hindu and gave some more details:

Anil Ambani-promoted Adlabs Films on Thursday said it is looking at tapping the USD 400-million market for digital content restoration through its new media BPO venture and is planning to foray into North America and Europe among others.

"With new platforms like mobiles, online and HD, the demand for content restoration has picked up... Major portion of the demand is coming from North America, Europe, the Middle East and South East Asia," Adlabs Films Chief Executive Officer Anil Arjun told PTI.

The 300-employee BPO division, which became operational four months ago and will add another 900 employees this year, is looking at major opportunities in North America and Europe.

I am thrilled on a personal level, partly because it is the company I work for, but also because I feel passionately about archiving and restoration and have been ever since I first read The Parade's Gone By.

There are tens of thousands of films slowly fading or corroding in archives around the world and for every restored "Gone With The Wind" or "Casablanca" there are tens of thousands of obscure titles that are just as much an important part of our audiovisual history that desperately need to be saved for future generations. Thanks to operations like this the cost of restoring films will go down and more will be saved.