NIIT Technologies on Wednesday signed $85 million partnership agreement with Georgia-based media company Morris

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Communications. The new joint venture company – NIIT Media Technologies – will offer integrated IT and business process outsourcing (BPO) services in North America.

The 60:40 joint venture between NIIT and Morris would invest $85 million over next five years. Under the JV, NIIT will take over all Morris shared services centres in Georgia and provide services to Morris Group and leverage NIIT’s offshore capabilities. NIIT will utilise 100 people of Morris for the onshore services and rest of the offshore services will be served from NIIT’s Greater Noida facility.

“NIIT never specialised in media entity, but now through this deal, we will focus on media industry. We already have few customers like Channel 4 of United Kingdom, managing their services and through this deal, we expect customers from North America as well,” chief executive officer, NIIT Technologies, Arvind Thakur told reporters here.

Headquartered in Augusta, Georgia, Morris Communications is a privately held group of media companies with holdings that include newspaper and magazines like Amarillo Globe-News, Athens Banner-Herald, The Augusta Chronicle, Bluffton Today, Brainerd (Minn.) Dispatch, The Florida Times-Union, Jacksonville and Juneau Empire.

It is also into outdoor advertising, radio broadcasting, book publishing and distribution, and online services.

“This partnership will reduce our cost of operations and services, while improving the level of services required to meeting our objectives in the future,” senior vice-president and chief financial officer of newspapers and shared services, Morris Communications, Steve K Stone said.