BANGALORE: The 18 billion Maa Group accred itself with another unique company that marks itself as the first ever advertising BPO, I-MAA. In a bid to expand their creative operations, I-MAA has launched itself in the international market. Comprising two divisions - creative and e-publishing, the company is looking at uncovering a strategic domain never crossed before.
The creative department fabricates logos, flash websites, leaflets, brochures, advertisements and designs. Their client base ranges from entrepreneurs to restaurants and consumer goods to durable and luxury goods.
The e-publishing department includes digitizing and conversion of print material into 16 kinds of different e-formats. It caters to the conversion of books, book covers, magazines, catalogues and university prospectus into formats like TIF and HTML.
A pioneer in integrated communications, the MAA Group already has all facets of the communications domain under its gamut viz. Draft Worldwide for Direct Marketing, Corporate Voice Weber Shandwick for Public Relations, RAMMS for Retail Solutions, Odyssey Video for TV & Motion pictures, Sirius Interactive for Web Solutions, Sirius Communications for Below-the-Line. Hence, a foray into advertisement BPO is but a natural extension of its strategic focus.
I-MAA has been promoting its services through a multitude of means like networking and the Internet.
Entering their second year in the business, I-MAA has enlarged their base by increasing clients in the US, Europe and UK. MAA Group Chairman Bunty Peerbhoy said, "The commencement of this operation was an experiment and we did not want to disclose our newly found market until we crossed some milestones. Now that we have fairly increased our foundation and number of clients, we have a strong premonition that this process has a definite future and is here to stay."
The MAA Group has been known to constantly evolve in the field of communications; now focussing on the small and medium-scaled businesses abroad, thus increasing I-MAA's margin.
One of the major advantages of this BPO is that there are no market surveys required to understand the grounds of advertisements abroad.
Clients are often very specific in their brief of their requirements.
Due to the time gap between I-MAA and its buyers, clients send their briefs at night to wake up and find outputs to their given briefing. Their most challenging task is to convert a written brief to a thought form that conveys the client's idea. After that it is the effort of the creative team to design an advertisement closely connected with the prospective client's needs.
As Peerbhoy says, "This is an untapped market, which we foresaw as a great opportunity for the outsourcing of a service sector without manpower immigration. The outsourcing of creative jobs is unheard of but is bound to catch up soon with the market terrains."
