Exclusive: Hiring in media and entertainment industry in need of democratisation – Vineet Bajpai, Talentrack

Engaging in a creative process or simply watching someone else practice their artistry is an immensely rewarding experience. It is hardly surprising, then, that the Indian Media and Entertainment Industry is one of the country’s most vibrant and resilient sectors. The world of glamour attracts people from all walks of life, but not everyone is treated fairly by the dynamics of the industry. For every performer or artist who makes it big, there are scores of others whose dreams have been crushed despite being blessed with talent. Providing a solution to this problem requires an in-depth understanding of the MECA or Media, Entertainment, Creative and Art space.

The media and entertainment industry in India consists of many different segments, including television, print, radio, films, gaming and digital content. Though a career in entertainment is often considered frivolous, the media industry is the second-largest employment generator of the Indian economy, being smaller than only the Information Technology sector. Its contribution is valued at USD 21 billion at the moment and experts predict that this figure will change to USD 100 billion by 2025. We have the world’s largest film industry and the world’s third-largest television market. This phenomenal growth is driven by our rich culture, favourable demographics, increasing literacy rates, and the growing desire to consume entertainment and news in different languages.

The Government of India has also supported the industry through initiatives such as digitising the cable distribution sector to attract greater institutional funding and increasing FDI limit from 74 per cent to 100 per cent in cable and DTH satellite platforms. Of course, the industry status of the sector itself has made finance easily accessible for all stakeholders. The rapid developments in technology have also played a significant role in fueling the growth of this sector. Backed by consumer demand and ever-improving advertising revenues, the industry is bound to stay relevant for many, many years to come.




It goes without saying that the central resource of this industry is artists-the tens of millions of people who are employed in this sector and depend on it for their livelihood. But despite the immeasurable contribution of artists to the sector, their value is often neglected and the market tends to consider them easily replaceable. In the absence of a strong aggregating platform, these talented individuals have to depend upon unorganised hiring processes, running from pillar to post at the beck and call of ruthless middlemen. Even after the widespread adoption of technology in the country, this vast community of artists does not have access to dedicated platforms that can help them, with the exception of perhaps a few poorly catalogued online directories for home and personal projects.

This situation is further complicated by the dynamic and chaotic nature of hiring in the MECA space. Unlike organised spaces like the corporate arena where people tend to remain employed with a single organisation for years, the MECA domain sees significantly high recruitment activity since artists are employed for any period between a few days to a few months depending on the nature of the project. This increases the overall hiring-velocity of the entire industry, which results in every artist being engaged by not one but numerous recruiters during a period of, say, one year. The number of recruitment transactions involved in the daily functioning of the industry is unimaginably massive, especially taking regional cinema, television and advertising into consideration. And this hiring takes place in an extremely unorganised manner, in stark contrast to corporate hiring which is made smooth by professional networking platforms like Naukri.com, LinkedIn, Shine.com and TimesJobs.




We identified this need for an organised and reliable online platform, and embarked upon the mission of facilitating MECA hiring by launching talentrack. The platform has been conceived to bring opportunities to all those who deserve it, by eliminating hurdles of chaos and unequal access. The mobile app and website allow both recruiters and artists to engage in and manage the entire hiring process seamlessly from their devices. talentrack’s simple dashboard and incredibly user-friendly interface makes the process achievable in a few clicks, which is nothing short of a miracle when compared to the conventional frustrating time period of several weeks or even months. Through the creation of this platform, talentrack is leveraging the latest developments in technology to transform and democratise the scattered and unorganised industry, successfully bridging the gap between artists and recruiters. 1,00,000 artists, hailing from over 700 cities and towns in India have already registered with the platform, and this number is growing at a rate of more than 500 new registrations per day. This mammoth aggregation is possible because of talentrack’s dedicated partners and team which consists of expert digital entrepreneurs and human resource managers.

Driven by its commitment to disrupt and revolutionise the MECA industry, the platform is well on its way to becoming a definitive market leader in the hiring and online-networking space. Going forward, the strengthening of networks amongst artists and performers will also enable talentrack to produce phenomenal artist-generated digital content, empowering talented creators to unveil their work directly to the audience. The platform’s new digital asset- talentrack Launchpad- is set to be introduced in November and is poised to drive high-volumes of public-curated digital content, propagated through strategic partnerships with leading content distributors.

talentrack will be generating revenues in excess of INR 100 million in the fiscal year 2017-18, with a view to exponentially increase this figure over the next three to five years. In other words, the platform is sure to emerge as not just a talent-exchange and networking platform for the MECA industry, but also as an enormous generator of content as well as the most lucrative platform for the marketing of all forms of media & entertainment franchises. Who would have imagined that this vast potential could be achieved merely through a passionate and democratic approach towards the field of creativity!




Through a transformation of the talent market, talentrack is poised to aggregate a plethora of talent-acquiring entities- including TV production houses, book publishers, art galleries, casting &modelling agencies, film production houses, producers, event management companies, fashion designers and literary agents-connecting them with a limitless, yet organised pool, of creative talent. The platform is bound to grow from strength to strength, fostering a rich community of artistic minds, and giving the entire hiring and crowd-sourced digital content production segment more than enough reason to migrate to this ultimate destination for creativity.

Disclaimer: The views and opinions expressed in this article are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the publication