Introduction:
This is a written version of the podcast featuring Ramki Sankaranarayanan, hosted by Atul from Vitrina. Summarized for quick reading, this Q&A-style transcript covers the story of Prime Focus Technologies, its SaaS and services strategy, innovations in AI and localization, and Ramki’s views on media supply chain transformation in today’s volatile entertainment landscape.

1. Vitrina: Can you walk us through the Prime Focus journey and its integration with DNEG?

Ramki Sankaranarayanan:
“Prime Focus Technologies is part of the Prime Focus Group, which has two principal entities — DNEG for premium content creation and PFT for downstream content supply chain services. DNEG handles everything from production to visual effects, animation, and mastering. PFT picks up from there — distributing that content globally, localizing it, and ensuring fulfillment. The group recently announced the merger of PFT and DNEG into a single entity, with DNEG as the unified brand.

PFT itself started 17 years ago in a garage in Bangalore, focusing on transforming the supply chain with the advent of digital content. Today, we’re an 1,800-person global team helping customers automate and manage the content supply chain.”

2. Vitrina: What major industry shifts have shaped your offerings in recent years?

Ramki Sankaranarayanan:
“The pandemic accelerated streaming adoption and pushed content to the cloud. The direct-to-consumer boom led to a steep rise in demand for localization and content preparation. Teams had to collaborate globally, and the industry had to adapt rapidly to support this. It created a huge demand for localization, mastering, compliance, fulfillment, and marketing services. All of this required automation and scalable infrastructure, which we support through our CLEAR platform.”

3. Vitrina: How does your CLEAR platform power the global media supply chain?

Ramki Sankaranarayanan:
“Customers use CLEAR — our cloud-based SaaS platform — to manage multi-vendor supply chains. It handles everything from compliance and localization to mastering, packaging, and marketing fulfillment. It’s built for orchestration at scale — managing short life cycles, compressed post windows, and high-volume workflows. Customers can use our tech independently of our services, which adds flexibility.

CLEAR enables dashboards, SLA tracking, and collaboration between suppliers — whether they’re localizing in 30 languages or creating marketing assets for global campaigns.”

4. Vitrina: You mentioned marketing fulfillment as a core service. How big is this capability?

Ramki Sankaranarayanan:
“We’re one of the largest post-production companies globally in this space, with 650 editors. We deliver about 20,000 unique marketing videos every month — everything from promos for AVOD, FAST channels, theatrical releases, and social platforms. We call it ‘techno-creative’ services — using tech to create highly personalized, scalable marketing content. It’s become the most important cog in the wheel to drive content discovery and consumption.”

5. Vitrina: You were early to invest in AI. What’s the story behind your AI initiatives?

Ramki Sankaranarayanan:
“We began investing in AI about seven years ago, focused on driving productivity and automation. Our AI platform — Clear AI — includes over 60 in-house models alongside those from AWS, Google, Microsoft, and others. We’re also patent holders of a multimodal framework called ‘Machine Wisdom,’ which combines picture, text, audio, and graphics for richer inferences.

We’ve processed 350,000+ hours of video with our AI stack — either through services or SaaS usage. CLEAR has AI embedded across tasks like intelligent search, metadata extraction, localization co-pilots, and fulfillment. We’ve made AI invisible and actionable — something we use ourselves as our own first client.”

6. Vitrina: Where is GenAI most impactful in your workflows right now?

Ramki Sankaranarayanan:
“The generative AI shift has supercharged our abilities. One standout is our content highlights engine — which creates highlight reels using AI, not just single clips. Editors used to spend hours scrubbing content. Now it takes seconds. It’s especially powerful for converting passive archives into active revenue-generating libraries.

Our NAB award-winning highlight engine merges GenAI with traditional models. Whether it’s creating vertical video experiences, automated social assets, or repackaging for new formats — it’s all outcome-focused.”

7. Vitrina: Can you give real-world examples of how clients are using these tools?

Ramki Sankaranarayanan:
“A major sports federation is building premium subscription content from its archives. A general entertainment network with hundreds of thousands of hours is using AI to create social monetization content. One client cleared 10,000 library titles in nine months using AI-assisted workflows — a job that would have required hundreds of editors otherwise.

Conversational AI is another leap — you can now ask the system to create a highlight, export it for Facebook in vertical format, or generate a Premiere playlist. It’s not just about metadata anymore. It’s about generating results, fast.”

8. Vitrina: How is demand changing with the rise of FAST and AVOD platforms?

Ramki Sankaranarayanan:
“This is the most in-demand area right now. Everyone wants to unlock monetization from old libraries with minimal upfront cost. AI helps reduce manual effort, especially for high-volume prep like ad marker insertion and sentiment analysis. Customers want outcomes — fast, cheap, and scalable. Our ad marker tools even provide contextual sentiment to help optimize placements.”

9. Vitrina: What differences do you see in use cases between sports, entertainment, and news?

Ramki Sankaranarayanan:
“Live is definitely growing. But even in news and sports, there’s huge opportunity in automating clips, summaries, and highlights — like press conferences or post-match interviews. From simple title generation to complex creative summaries, AI makes it possible to meet real-time demands. GenAI’s big advantage is comprehension — it enables search, summarization, and editing like never before.”

10. Vitrina: What are you hearing from the market today in terms of outlook?

Ramki Sankaranarayanan:
“Over the last four to six quarters, the common theme has been: ‘Do more with less.’ Studios and streamers are under pressure to cut costs while exploring new monetization. They’re rethinking original content budgets, rediscovering library value, and navigating changing distribution models. There’s a massive shift from upfront spending to performance-linked investment.

Efficiencies, speed, and AI-led productivity are critical across every department — even in marketing, which traditionally wasn’t seen as a workflow to optimize. Now, everyone wants tools that scale, fast.”

11. Vitrina: How do you support such diverse customers — from large studios to indie creators?

Ramki Sankaranarayanan:
“We serve everything from top studios and networks to YouTube creators. Our customers choose what works for them — software only, services only, or both. We’ve built flexibility into our offering to match their digital transformation journey. Change management is real. Enterprise AI adoption isn’t just a tech challenge — it’s about getting humans to trust AI and embrace new workflows.”

12. Vitrina: What’s the core philosophy driving Prime Focus Technologies today?

Ramki Sankaranarayanan:
“We’re reimagining everything through an AI-first lens — how can we do it differently, faster, and more intelligently? Whether it’s search, highlights, compliance, or monetization — it’s about applying AI to real business cases. And we offer it any way customers want — SaaS, licensed AI, or full-service execution. The goal is to deliver productivity, at scale, globally.”