The digital war room at Encompass Singapore at Loyang Cresent
You shoot a video on site in Los Angeles during the day.
By evening, the unedited footage is sent to a backend processing center in Asia, where they proceed to work on it till the wee hours of the morning.
By morning, the video is ready to be distributed all around the world.
This is the promise of what an interconnected world can do. Similar to the outsourcing of call centres to India, the media industry is shifting work — like backend content formatting and distribution – to Asia.
And this digital media industry is booming.
At a press luncheon last week, Encompass Digital Media, a global broadcast service provider, announced plans for an estimated US$20 million investment plan into Singapore to grow its venture in the region.
This will be used to upgrade Encompass’ technology infrastructure like the Singapore facility, which at 88,000 square feet is the largest digital media hub in Asia. It will also be used to grow the employee base from 140 to 200 by the end of 2016.
According to Deepakjit Singh, manging director of Encompass Singapore, revenue growth in Asia has increased year on year by 15 to 20 percent in the last two to three years.
The business potential is so good that they in fact had to turn away last minute customers who turned up the Broadcast Asia 2011 show to see them.
It wasn’t that case when they first started out three years ago in the region.
“No one would turn up at our booth at Broadcast Asia,” explained Deepakjit, as then when they started out few had heard of them.
From starting out as a backend facility for Discovery Channel, Encompass Asia has grown its customer base more than 10 times since then.
But the industry is a cut-throat one, and according to Deepakjit, if they do not “continually innovate”, they will be overtaken by hungrier competitors in the region.
For now, as the business is a volume game, Encompass Asia is in a sweet spot as it managed to “get critical mass” in the market.
Said Deepakjit: “It’s cheaper for me to add a channel for distribution than any of my competitors as we’ve already spent on our infrastructure.”
He also cited Singapore’s political stability and strong intellectual property laws as reasons why citing a media hub in Singapore made good business sense. Encompass Asia is not funded by the Singapore government in any way.
“They’ve been very supportive of what we do here,” he said.
