Fours, sixes and hi-fives: Pune AI startup is changing how cricket highlights are made

“Congratulations to the Indian Cricket Team. They have been fantastic for a long time and this was a long time coming,” says Rohan Pashankar, among the leadership team of VideoVerse. VideoVerse is celebrating its own victory at present – as it has been acquired by Black Rock-funded Minute Media, one of the top global technology and sports content companies.

Vinayak Shrivastav, the CEO, says, “This acquisition marks an exciting new chapter for Videoverse. Over the past few years, we’ve built a global technology company out of India, and this milestone reaffirms that world-class innovation can emerge from here. Pune has played a key role in our journey, it’s home to some of our most talented engineers and creative minds. Joining forces with a partner that shares our vision will allow us to accelerate our mission of redefining how the world experiences video content. “Minute Media brings global reach, publishing expertise and monetisation capabilities, while VideoVerse adds AI-driven automation and real-time content creation,” says Pashankar.

“Together, we are building a full-stack video ecosystem that helps sports leagues, federations, and creators produce, distribute, and monetise content faster and smarter. It is a big step toward reshaping how sports content travels from the field to the fan.”

Leveraging AI for content creation

VideoVerse was founded in 2016 by three entrepreneurs – Vinayak Shrivastav, Alok Patil and Saket Dandotia – who shared a curiosity about how AI could transform the way content was produced and consumed. Each founder brought a distinct expertise spanning sports, video production, and technology.

What began as an idea to simplify video workflows evolved into a platform redefining how organisations create and share content at scale. They were soon to spot an opportunity.

“Imagine a live cricket match streaming online. Earlier, an editor would wait for the match to end, download hours of footage, and manually cut out the highlights. The process was not only high on effort but also took a lot of time to finish,” says Pashankar.

Their solution was called Magnifi. The AI models are trained to detect key moments inside any cricket game, such as fours, sixes and wickets. “We also detect key non-sporting events like celebrations, off-field interaction, crowd moments using a combination of multiple models and cut clips that are later stitched together to create highlights,” says Pashankar.

Player-focused models

For high-profile tournaments like the Women’s World Cup, the company also sets up player-focused models that follow key players, such as Deepti Sharma and Shafali Verma, and record specific clips showcasing their performances.

The AI tool reads the live stream as the match unfolds, identifies wickets, boundaries, and celebrations in real time, and instantly creates highlight clips with auto subtitles, thumbnails, and ready-to-share formats across platforms.

“You can even publish directly to multiple platforms,” adds Pashankar, who attended the same school and played in the school football team as the CEO Shrivastav. He came on board two years ago with Prateek Sharma, another classmate who leads the strategy team.

“Between the three of us, we took Videoverse to the next level,” says Pashankar.

To get an idea of the market size, it is important to understand that Magnifi had begun as a response to the real challenges the company saw while working with one of India’s largest OTT platforms, particularly around creating cricket highlights efficiently.

“Through conversations with broadcasters and clients, we recognised a broader need for automation across the entire video production cycle. What started as a highlight creation tool has evolved into a complete end-to-end production automation engine powered by AI,” says Pashankar.

Expansion plans

Following the acquisition, VideoVerse will spend the next year growing its “tech muscle and building smarter products”.

“This acquisition isn’t just a milestone for Videoverse, it’s a catalyst for growth in India’s AI and machine learning ecosystem. Over the next 18 months, we plan to expand our talent base by adding more than 250–300 new roles across engineering, data science, and product innovation. India has some of the brightest minds in AI, and we’re committed to creating opportunities that allow them to build technology shaping the future of video globally,” says Sharma.