After years of effort at acquiring an Indian PR agency, Hill & Knowlton recently announced that it is taking over the reins of I-PAN (a JWT owned PR agency) in India. With this, all major WPP PR outfits have registered their presence in India.

In recent months, several global PR networks and even large independent agencies have made their foray into the Indian market. Publicis acquired Hanmer & Partners, APCO and Fleishman Hillard have set-up shops while others like Ketchum are reportedly in advanced talks with PR consultancies in India. Even smaller specialist firms like College Hill and Christiansen have begun operations.

India is a slightly tricky market for entry considerations. The entire PR consultancy business is estimated at a mere US$ 80 million – less than the size of any single independent American firm such as Waggner-Edstorm, APCO or even Text-100. In comparative terms, it is probably about one-tenth the size of the Chinese PR industry. At the same time, it is difficult to avoid India, given the global hype about India’s economic growth potential. For a while, most of these entrants should be happy to build an annual business of a couple of million dollars in the short run.

I hope their presence in India becomes a force multiplier for expanding the Indian PR industry, both in terms of size and the quality of practice.

This entry was posted on Friday, July 17th, 2009 at 9:25 pm and is filed under Insight, Perspectives. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.