Pre-media is a segment encompassing diverse activities, from colour management, pre-flighting, design and page layout, to prototyping, among others. Arnab Maiti, what are the areas you are involved in and which are the industry segments you service?
Esko is present in all of the above-mentioned areas, right from pre-flighting, editing, colour management and sample making. We have a unique position of offering a complete solution to many of our customers from design to samples to flexo printing plates which can be integrated with Esko software seamlessly. 

Today, we are increasingly using the term pre-media instead of pre-press. This signals a major shift in approach. How would you differentiate between traditional pre-press and modern Pre-media?
Pre-media houses cater to local as well as international brands, and the activities are not just restricted to designing, pre-media houses also take care of proofing. Pre-media only deals with digital files as output while the pre-press houses also supply printing plates as an end output. 

Esko touches 90% brands worldwide. Can you elaborate on what Esko offers to the various brands?
We help brands bring products faster into the markets, by helping them in reducing the time it takes to prepare an artwork, get approvals in place by using online and 3D tools, managing last minute changes and enhancing the printability and dependability of the files for flexo printing which includes a label and flexible packaging printing. 

Please name the top five international brands that Esko touches?
Few of the top brands include Coca-Cola, PepsiCo, Unilever, P&G, Mondelez, GSK and many more.

Also, top five national brands and how?
National brands like ITC, Britannia, International Tobacco, United spirits, Wipro and many more at some point or the other do use Esko’s services and products.

Earlier, a specific Pre-media input was restricted to a specific and defined output. Thus, how important is it for an Esko’s applications to create files which are platform-neutral. How do you do it?
Esko currently caters to the packaging and printing part of the business, while we can still help in creating impositions for book work, we do not offer solutions for creating files for e-publishing.

While you are not directly involved in product actualisation, say printing of a product, or mass production of an actual packaging prototype, how involved are you in the process? What according to you should be the idea working relationship between a firm like Esko and a print firm?
We work hand in hand with our customers and their feedback is very valuable for us to improve and implement new features into our software, we also have few customers who help us with beta testing our new solutions.

As technology evolves, and as job requirements change, it is important to identify the right kind of output technology. How do you help your clients find the right technology partners? How do you educate them in the right way of using the technology?
Esko shares a great relationship with our technology partners, right from software to our hardware solutions we make sure that a lot of testing has been done using both internal and external dependencies and the same has been informed to the customers when making a decision. We also help by benchmarking some files for customers even before they have made a purchase so that there is a complete confidence in our technology offerings.

With digital non-print technologies making the processes more fluid than ever, what according to you are the future scopes of pre-media / pre-press?
We foresee increased automation coming into the production processes; all software will be evolved in a simpler way of preparing the artworks. We also would say that cloud computing and having cloud-based services would be in demand. We can already see the use of internet and mobile applications that have made it easier for users to make custom calendars or photo books now.