Passage To India

A few weeks ago, I noted an article in The Economist on a new angle in outsourcing: Indian firms recruiting European employees to work in India. I received an e-mail from Charles that provided another example:

Your post "The 'I's have it", really sparked my interest. I'm the Program Director at an animation and media arts school in Western Canada, and I have a recent story of my own that might intrigue you...

Last year one of our recent graduates, an older American student who had been doing some assisting teaching for me, set up a game production studio in India, in order to complete a "pitch" for a planned pc game. (when an independent producer needs to attract sufficient funding for such a huge project, it's common to assemble as much as possible of a game, such as examples of proposed characters, and animated samples of what the eventual gameplay will look like, before actual production of the game has begun, in order to suggest the marketability of the proposed game and the likely artistic quality of the eventual product... in other words, in order for it to be "started", quite a lot of it has to already be completed!) All this pre-production is very expensive by being **very** time-consuming, and to stretch the reach of his modest start-up capital, this entrepreneurial graduate installed himself in a large town near Bombay, where living expenses would be a fraction of those in a typical Canadian city. He calculated that it was cheaper for him to pay room and board, plus a small salary, oh *and* moving expenses, to highly-trained Canadian animators to work in India for half-a-year, than to just pay them a competitive wage here in Canada.

The salaries he offered some of our recent graduate students sounded ridiculous, at first: living expenses (free room and board) and $200 US a month, a figure that would be only a little higher than comparative Indian wages for similar work. Well, at first my students scoffed at the low figures... until they did some math. Since rent and transportation (and food) here in Vancouver BC is so-o-o-o-o expensive, they wouldn't be able to save much more beyond $200 US a month after meeting their living expenses anyway... so it put a whole new light on the opportunity. My former student had little trouble filling his studio with the talent he needed.

And so over the last 6 months I've been receiving a steady stream of email with tales of riding elephants through city streets, visiting the Taj Majal over Christmas holidays, attending cultural festivals (apparently one a week), and many other colourful descriptions of living and working in India from several of my better Canadian students who, like the Europeans mentioned in your post, saw an interesting opportunity and decided to try it out for a while. They work hard hours (as everyone in our industry must), but the perks sound well worth it, and since they don't have to buy any food or pay any rent, their admittedly low salaries are ending up virtually intact in their bank accounts. Not a bad deal for a first job, gaining valuable industry experience in an exotic location, with major living expenses taken care of. (Echoing how Canada itself was first populated, by European indentured servants)

They're back now, their pitch complete, the adventurous producer undertaking a grueling tour of various states to round up some investors. He's emailed me asking to set up some interviews with more of our graduates, in the hopes that game production gets to go forward later this year. Back to India they will all go, to complete the project.

So Europe isn't the only country to be exporting workers to India, and neither are large-sized companies the only firms to do so... it is a process happening at a small entrepreneurial level as well!

Thanks to you and your, er, "blogmates" for your stimulating blogwork, I read you often during the week. (and I try to listen to your NARN broadcasts when I'm home on my Saturday mornings, although lately I haven't had much luck getting the streaming to work for me... sigh...)

Canadian cartoonists working in India? What a world we live in. What a world. By the way, from what I understand the problems with the Northern Alliance Radio Network stream have been corrected and there should no problem catching the show on the 'net in the future.