MAM
Prime Focus reloads advertising services
MUMBAI: Independent media services provider Prime Focus Limited has reloaded its advertising services offering in India with a series of hires across its creative team and a new offline editing facility. The newly revamped division offers advertising clients world-class post production technology and access to some of the nation’s leading creative talent.
Bhaarath Sundar has rejoined the Prime Focus advertising team as chief business development officer for Advertising & Animation after a period of two years as group CEO and managing partner of Teamwork Studios. Sundar is leading the reloaded advertising offering, which operates across three integrated sites in Khar, Mumbai, offering online editing and grading, a dedicated CG / VFX and animation team and a brand new dedicated offline editing studio.
Commenting on the re-launch, Sundar said, “Indian agencies and brands are producing truly world-class advertising, and we have reloaded thePrime Focus Advertising division to give our clients access to the best facilities and talent in India. Following our recent hires, we estimate we have almost 90 per cent of the high-end advertising services creative talent available in India, working under one banner and with all the latest technology at their finger-tips. The way ads are finished and delivered is constantly changing, and we’re here not only to help realize our clients’ ideas as beautifully as possible, but also to take away the headaches of the technical aspects of delivery.”
Joining Prime Focus co-founders and creative heads Huzefa Lokhandwala and Prakash Kurup on the creative team is an exciting list of some of the advertising services industry’s top talent in India.
“We have been a market-leader in the Advertising post production space for many years, but standing still is not in our DNA,” said Prime FocusLimited global CEO executive chairman founder and founder Namit Malhotra.
“This investment in talent and technology shows our commitment to the advertising community and the incredible work that they are producing. Our full-service post production offering, working alongside our Camera and Equipment Rental division, ensures that our advertising clients have access to the very latest kit and the best artistic talent from shoot all the way through post-production to multi-platform delivery.”
The Prime Focus Advertising team has recently delivered a number of high-profile commercials, including Advertising Age India’s ‘Top Ads of the Week’: IndiaMART ‘#IndiaKiKhoj’ (Show&Tell Productions / Bang In The Middle); Maggi ‘Hostel’ (Breathless Films / McCann Erickson); and Cadbury Dairy Milk Silk ‘Puppets’ (Breathless Films / Ogilvy & Mather).
Click here for the full list of the team
Brands
Samsung certifies 1,000 Maharashtra students in AI and coding
The South Korean electronics giant marks its first large-scale skilling push in the state, with women making up nearly half the national programme’s enrolment
PUNE: Samsung has put 1,000 students in Maharashtra through a certified training programme in artificial intelligence and coding, the largest such drive the South Korean electronics company has run in the state and a signal that corporate India’s skilling ambitions are moving well beyond the boardroom brochure.
The certifications were awarded under Samsung Innovation Campus (SIC), the company’s flagship corporate social responsibility programme, which launched in India in 2022 with the stated aim of democratising access to future-technology education. The 1,000 graduates were drawn from four institutions: 127 from Savitribai Phule Pune University, 373 from Pimpri Chinchwad University, 250 from D.Y. Patil University’s Ramrao Adik Institute of Technology and 250 from Anjuman-I-Islam’s Kalsekar Technical Campus. All completed training in either AI or coding and programming, the two disciplines Samsung has identified as the critical pillars of the digital economy.
The programme does not stop at technical training. Soft-skills development and career-readiness modules are baked into the curriculum, a deliberate attempt to close the gap between what universities teach and what employers actually want.
“India’s digital growth story will ultimately be shaped by the quality of its talent pipeline,” said Shubham Mukherjee, head of CSR and corporate communications at Samsung Southwest Asia. “As technologies like AI move from the periphery to the core of industries, skilling must evolve from basic training to building real-world capability. This milestone in Maharashtra reflects how industry and academia can come together to create a future-ready workforce that is both globally competitive and locally relevant.”
The Maharashtra drive sits within a rapidly scaling national effort. Samsung Innovation Campus trained 20,000 young people across India in 2025, hitting its stated target for the year. Women account for 48 per cent of national enrolments, a figure the company cites as evidence of its push for an inclusive technology ecosystem. The programme is implemented in partnership with the Electronics Sector Skills Council of India and the Telecom Sector Skill Council.
Samsung, which is marking 30 years in India this year, runs SIC alongside two other initiatives, Samsung Solve for Tomorrow and Samsung DOST, as part of a broader effort to build what it calls a generation of innovators with both the technical depth and the problem-solving mindset to thrive in a fast-moving digital world.
A thousand certified students is a tidy headline. Whether they find jobs that match their new skills is the harder question, and the one that will ultimately determine whether corporate skilling programmes like this one are genuine pipelines or well-photographed gestures.
