October 18, 2004

This article written from a Canadian perspective is of particular interest to Indian multimedia, software and animation service providers. It contains rarely discussed information about the relationship of North American clients with Indian companies. It's blunt, definitely not politically correct so sensitive readers, beware. If this article is of interest to you or some of your partners, do not copy it, fax it, reprint it, republish it or "rewrite" it. Just send others the link to this article, so they can read it here in full context.

Coolstreak Cartoons often works with Indian service providers. In fact we work with service providers from all over the world. Indians are smart and probably second only to Russians in software development. You are definitely better, on average than North Americans. However, dealing with Indian companies is always a struggle compared with companies from other places.

There's something that Indian providers just don't "get." Most often, you end up frustrating your clients. At first, I used to joke about how you would call us "Respected Sir." The problem is more profound. As an industry, Indian service providers should upgrade their practices because potential North American customers like Coolstreak Cartoons rarely enjoys working with you.

1-Enforce strict copyrights and intellectual property practices. North American companies should not see their products copied, rebranded and sold for less, six months down the line after contracting a job with an Indian studio.

2-Stop selling new customers, contents created and copied from other clients.

3-Stop playing with your pricing model. Many North Americans are fully aware of your costs of development. Don't charge more than you are worth it or more than your cost of development and a reasonable margin.

4-Put back some of what you take. There's a serious trade deficit with Indian software providers. For example, you guys are very fond of all the free contents and "market intelligence" offered at ToonDoctor.com and many of you visit, register in bulk to our newsletter. Yet, in two years, there hasn't been a single sale from India. All we get from India are companies offering their services.

5-Purchase the licenses of the products you work with. That means, don't develop our products with cracked versions of Macromedia, Microsoft and Adobe, Apple and so on. It's easy to tell when a service provider works with cracked software.

6-Don't try to sell everything to everybody. The number of proposals from pure coders saying they can make cartoon animation is staggering and insulting. Writing software and making cartoons are two very different things. When showing examples of cartoon animation, make sure the demos are better than anything available at ToonDoctor.com.

7-Stop hyping your facilities and computers. We care about talents, not machines. About talents, understand that Indian iconography and film imagery does not translate well or grab North American clients' interest. It's understandable that Indian animation is not as old as that of other countries. Yet, if you are not ready to export, don't.

8-Use North American wording for you service descriptions. "CBT" is an Indian expression. We do not use that expression and many others in North America. Please use American or Canadian English when approaching us.

9-Give your customers what they want, not what you think is best for them. Respect the product descriptions and requirements provided to you. Don't add or delete elements you think the customers need or doesn't need without first asking. And if there's such an issue, you should have spotted it at the initial stage of the project, not in the middle of the production.

10-Provide clear information about your workflow. Too often it seems like providers subcontract projects to smaller companies. Provide standardized tracking for all steps of a project.

Do all of this and you will land jobs with companies like Coolstreak Cartoons. Don't and continue to lose business and validate the negative perceptions many have of Indian companies. The entire Indian industry should ponder and upgrade all of its practices because for a typical North American, all Indian companies are the same.

We have no way of verifying anything about you such as the multiple degrees from technical universities that we've never heard before that you are so quick to name. Not even the folks at the local Indian embassies and consulates are helpful in that regard. That's one of the biggest barriers as they don't even have agents who specialize business development on hand.

Coolstreak Cartoons Inc.

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