Online business content solutions platform Prime Focus Technologies (PFT) aims to replicate India’s success story across the world and be a partner of choice for media and entertainment (M&E) enterprises.
As a cloud solutions provider with a global delivery model and a digital media services cloud infrastructure at its disposal, PFT is working on strengthening its presence in the US and the UK, which has received impetus with the acquisition of DAX, the creators of the Primetime Emmy award-winning Digital Dailies solution.
“We are working with several prominent clients, including a major broadcaster. LATAM and Canada are our new focus geographies where we have started building teams,” said Ramki Sankarnarayanan, CEO and co-founder, PFT.
The cloud solutions provider recently received funding from Ambit Pragma. It plans to use the investment for intensifying development efforts of the SaaS (software as a service) products, including CLEAR Media ERP, as well as gaining deeper penetration and growth in strategic markets such as North America and EMEA with increased sales and marketing initiatives.
“The capital will help us pursue new business opportunities and sustain our position of global leadership in the Media ERP space,” Sankarnarayanan said.
Recently, a FICCI-KPMG report had pegged the Indian media and entertainment industry at Rs.2.26 trillion by 2020. So, what market opportunity does this offer to cloud service providers like PFT?
“If M&E organisations have to succeed in this era of fierce competition, they need to move away from isolated media asset management and technology silos holding them back,” he said.
He further added that the industry needs to re-evaluate their technology investments and build a connected ecosystem by virtualising the content supply chain and implementing ONE software across the enterprise. “With our flagship product, CLEAR Media ERP, we are in a position to partner with companies and help them through their journey of digital transformation,” Sankarnarayanan said.
CLEAR is specially tailored to suit the needs of M&E companies, and enables them to tap digital consumer landscape. This product also helps them enhance efficiencies and drive lowest total cost of ownership and operations.
When asked him about the challenges faced in digitally transforming M&E companies, he highlighted that traditional revenues are shrinking and costs are increasing on the back of digital endeavours.
“Typically, M&E companies use multiple localised, non-scalable digital asset management systems across different departments and locations with poor upstream and downstream collaboration, creative and broadcasting or production systems. They operate in silos, which result in duplication of content, huge costs, lack of agility and collaboration,” he said.
PFT’s cloud-enabled Media ERP (enterprise resource planning) Suite, CLEAR addresses all these challenges by bringing content to the centre of the business and virtualising the content supply chain. It provides a single software on the cloud for all departments across the enterprise. “This helps M&E companies drive creative enablement, enhance efficiencies, reduce cost and boost revenues,” he said.
Sankarnarayanan also revealed that the company is in an expansion mode, and in the process of expanding its sales and marketing outreach, presence in global markets as well as product portfolio offerings.
BW Reporters
The author is a journalist with BW Businessworld. He primarily covers Retail, Media & Entertainment and Travel & Tourism sectors
