Ministry of Information and Broadcasting showcases Startup-Led AI Innovation in Media, Gaming, and Creative Technologies
Key Takeaways
- WAVES Creators Corner serves as the primary platform for showcasing market-ready AI solutions and founder-led innovation across creative sectors.
- Participation of 51 startups from the AVGC-XR and Media Tech sectors reflects the depth and operational maturity of India’s AI startup ecosystem.
- The MIB–Adobe collaboration highlights scalable AI-enabled creative workflows, filmmaking innovation, and original intellectual property creation.
- AI-powered gaming and immersive media startups demonstrate applications across creative production, live sports engagement, adaptive gameplay, and enterprise use cases.
The India AI Impact Summit 2026 commenced on 16 February 2026 at Bharat Mandapam, New Delhi, marking the first international summit on Artificial Intelligence hosted in the Global South. This landmark event positions India as a pivotal player in the global AI dialogue, emphasizing AI-led growth that prioritizes People, Progress, and Planet. With startups at the forefront of innovation and scalable deployment, the summit advances India’s vision for responsible, indigenous AI capabilities while fostering inclusive and sustainable development.
A key highlight is the dedicated MIB Pavilion of Ministry of Information and Broadcasting, which showcases India’s thriving AI startup ecosystem at the intersection of media, entertainment, gaming, and creative technologies. Through the WAVES Creators Corner, the pavilion offers a dynamic platform for live demonstrations, panels, masterclasses, fireside chats, and startup showcases, enabling direct interactions among founders, policymakers, investors, creators, and international stakeholders.
The focus prominently features the AVGC-XR (Animation, Visual Effects, Gaming, Comics, and Extended Reality) and Media Tech sectors, where 51 startups are showcasing market-ready, AI-powered solutions across content creation, immersive experiences, multilingual tools, adaptive gameplay, and digital storytelling. This convergence reflects the Government of India’s recognition of the creative economy as a strategic driver of growth, employment, and innovation.
Catalysing Growth in India’s Creative Economy: Union Budget 2026–27
The creative economy comprises industries where value is generated from creativity, culture, technology, and intellectual property. It spans media and entertainment, animation and VFX, gaming, live events, and digital content platforms that operate across global markets, contributing to GDP, employment, and exports. Framed within the broader vision of the Orange Economy, culture and creativity are treated as strategic economic assets—linking heritage and talent with innovation, market access, and global partnerships to generate income and international influence.
Platforms such as the World Audio Visual and Entertainment Summit (WAVES) & AI Impact Summit 2026 operationalise this vision by connecting creators, startups, investors, and policymakers to enable co-productions, IP marketplace linkages, incubation, and cross-border collaborations.
The Union Budget 2026–27 further reinforces this trajectory by recognising the creative (Orange) economy as a driver of growth, employment, and innovation, with specific emphasis on the Animation, Visual Effects, Gaming, and Comics (AVGC) sector aligned with digital and AI-led development. It supports the Indian Institute of Creative Technologies (IICT), Mumbai, to establish AVGC Content Creator Labs in 15,000 secondary schools and 500 colleges nationwide, building a skilled talent pipeline. With the AVGC sector projected to require nearly 2 million professionals by 2030, this positions the creative economy as a major employment engine for the digital generation.
MIB Pavilion: Focus Areas and Key Highlights
The MIB has established a dedicated Pavilion at the India AI Impact Summit 2026 to present India’s AI startup capabilities across media, entertainment, gaming, and creative technologies. The Pavilion operates within a sector that has transitioned from cultural relevance to economic centrality.
India’s media and entertainment sector was valued at approximately ₹2.5 trillion in 2024, with total revenues projected to reach ₹3.067 trillion by 2027, growing at an average annual rate of around 7 percent. Digital media alone accounts for nearly one-third of sector revenues, reflecting the accelerating shift toward platform-based production and distribution models. The broader ecosystem supports over 10 million livelihoods, directly and indirectly, and generates annual output of approximately ₹3 lakh crore.
Within this expanding landscape, the Pavilion brings together technology developers, content creators, investors, policymakers, and global stakeholders across three focus areas:
Media and Entertainment: AI-driven solutions for content creation, production, and distribution are central to the Pavilion’s showcase. This segment operates within a media industry where:
Digital media revenues stood at ₹802 billion in 2024, projected to reach ₹1,104 billion by 2027.
Filmed entertainment generated ₹187 billion in 2024, with steady projected growth.
Animation and VFX contributed approximately ₹103 billion in 2024, expected to scale to ₹147 billion by 2027.
Startups demonstrate AI-assisted filmmaking, virtual production, automated editing, multilingual dubbing, voice synthesis, AI avatars, and digital storytelling tools. These applications improve efficiency across production pipelines while expanding multilingual reach in a country with diverse linguistic markets. As digital revenues outpace traditional formats, AI integration strengthens scalability and cost optimisation across content workflows.
Gaming and Immersive Technologies: Gaming represents one of the fastest-scaling segments of India’s creative economy.
Online gaming generated ₹232 billion in 2024, projected to reach ₹316 billion by 2027.
The segment is positioned among the most dynamic components of the AVGC-XR ecosystem.
India ranks among the world’s largest gaming markets by user base, supported by widespread mobile penetration and a digitally native demographic. Rising monetisation, expanding domestic studios, and integration with global platforms are transforming gaming from mass engagement to structured digital industry growth.
MIB Pavilion showcases include generative AI for game asset development, real-time commentary systems, adaptive gameplay engines, immersive environments, and interactive sports technologies. These innovations demonstrate the transition from gaming consumption to AI-native game development and immersive platform creation.
Creative and Content Technologies: The broader AVGC-XR ecosystem—comprising animation, visual effects, gaming, comics, and extended reality—represents the most technology-intensive frontier of the creative economy.
India’s animation and VFX sector operates as a globally integrated production base, contributing to international films, streaming platforms, advertising campaigns, and immersive experiences. Established creative hubs in Bengaluru, Hyderabad, Mumbai, Pune, Chennai, and Thiruvananthapuram anchor this ecosystem, supported by an expanding mid-level and senior talent base.
The MIB Pavilion features AI applications for podcasts, virtual studios, immersive theatre, experiential media, and creator tools that integrate into these production pipelines. With projections of nearly 2 million direct and indirect jobs over the next decade in the AVGC sector, AI-enabled creative technologies are positioned as both economic and employment multipliers.
Key Highlight of the MIB Pavilion at AI Impact Summit 2026
- WAVES Creators Corner housed within the MIB Pavilion, is serving as a structured space for panels, masterclasses, fireside chats and startup showcases.
- 51 startups from India’s AVGC-XR and Media Tech sector showcasing AI-powered innovations at the India AI Impact Expo 2026.
- MIB in partnership with Adobe is showcasing India’s AI-enabled creative ecosystem during the India AI. A key highlight is Kathāvatār, a curated showcase of five Made-in-India AI short films — Language of Birds, Migoi, Uttarayan, The Barber’s Secret, and Yappasauras — screened at the AI Theatre within WAVES Creators Corner. Adobe is also hosting a thematic session titled “The Future of Film: AI, Creativity, and Craft,” along with a Content Creation Hub demonstrating AI-led video production workflows for faster, scalable and innovative content creation.
- Renowned film director Shekhar Kapur leads a masterclass on AI-powered storytelling and evolving cinematic practice.
- Key technology demonstrations include Zero-Touch Autonomous Newsroom, Bhasha-Wall with multilingual dubbing and AI sign language avatars, Samvad Setu, The Director’s Chair, AI podcast studio, conversational humanoid robots, and voice cloning solutions.
- Bhashasetu and Kalaasetu challenge winners presenting AI tools for cultural preservation and linguistic accessibility.
- AI Immersive Theatre featuring 270-degree projection and spatial design, curated AI films, CinemAI Hackathon finalists from International Film Festival of India.
- Scheduled sessions at the MIB Pavilion will showcase innovations from LTM BlueVerse, AWS, Google with Evergent, Sony Research India, PurpleTalk, Dashverse, Pocket FM, Kuku FM, and Lumikai, promoting knowledge exchange, policy dialogue, and India’s leadership in responsible AI creative services.
The MIB Pavilion at the India AI Impact Summit 2026 stands out as a key highlight of India’s expanding creative economy, bringing together 51 AI-driven startups, industry leaders, and global partners under the WAVES Creators Corner. Through showcases such as immersive theatre experiences, and advanced newsroom and gaming technologies, the MIB Pavilion demonstrates the practical integration of AI into content creation and digital platforms. Collectively, these highlights reflect a sector that is scaling in value, capability, and global relevance.
Indian AI & Gaming Startups Take Center Stage at India AI Impact Summit 2026
AI-powered gaming and immersive media emerge as a strategic pillar within India’s expanding AVGC ecosystem. The Summit highlights how AI accelerates production pipelines, enhances interactive storytelling, and supports original IP creation.
Under the gaming and interactive technology category, five pioneering Indian startups will showcase cutting-edge AI-powered solutions, highlighting India’s growing leadership at the intersection of AI, gaming, immersive media and enterprise transformation.
Generative AI for Creative Production: Yesgnome will present Sketly AI, an advanced art-generation platform designed for game studios and creative teams. By enabling production-ready asset generation, proprietary style training, rapid iteration, and scalable workflows, the platform demonstrates how AI is transforming content pipelines—reducing bottlenecks while preserving artistic coherence and studio identity.
Real-Time Generative AI in Sports Gaming: Metasports (Hitwicket) will demonstrate its Generative AI-powered live commentary engine integrated within its multiplayer cricket platform. By analyzing gameplay in real time and delivering contextual, voice-enabled narration, the system elevates immersion and personalization, illustrating how AI-driven storytelling enhances interactive sports entertainment.
Console-Grade Mobile Gaming Ecosystem: Koyozo will showcase its integrated hardware-software ecosystem that transforms smartphones into console-grade gaming devices. Through intelligent button mapping, remote play integration, performance analytics, and modular hardware innovation, the platform addresses fragmentation in India’s mobile gaming ecosystem while enabling high-performance competitive gameplay.
Human vs AI Interactive Experience: Youth Buzz (Ourcadium) will present “Man vs. GPT,” a live, adaptive gameplay format where human participants compete against AI agents that learn and evolve in real time. The showcase simplifies complex AI mechanisms into audience-friendly immersive experiences, highlighting India’s push toward original intellectual property in interactive entertainment.
Enterprise Cognitive AI Readiness: Evivve will debut its Enterprise Cognitive AI Readiness Tool based on its neuroscience-driven AFERR Model. Operating as a live diagnostic lab at the summit, the tool evaluates leadership and organizational preparedness for AI adoption, moving beyond technical metrics to assess cognitive adaptability and decision-making alignment with intelligent systems.
Investing in India’s AI Gaming Future
A special panel discussion titled “The New Gold Rush: Investing in India’s AI-Powered Gaming Future,” curated in collaboration with the Game Developers Association of India, will convene global investors and industry leaders to discuss India’s expanding influence in AI-driven game development and interactive media.
The session will examine evolving investment trends, AI-enabled production models, skilling initiatives and policy frameworks required to accelerate India’s rise as a global powerhouse in AI-powered gaming innovation.
Together, these startups demonstrate how AI is moving beyond experimentation to become embedded within gaming production, immersive experiences, and enterprise transformation frameworks. Their solutions reflect a maturing ecosystem that combines creative innovation with scalable technology deployment. Collectively, they signal India’s emergence as a developer of AI-native gaming platforms rather than solely a consumer market.
Expanding Global Opportunities for Indian Creative Industry
The India AI Impact Summit 2026 has created new avenues for Indian AI startups and creative professionals to connect with global innovation, capital, and policy networks. With over 300 curated pavilions and live demonstrations, the India AI Impact Expo 2026 convenes 600+ startups and 13 country delegations, amplifying international exposure across media and entertainment, AVGC-XR, gaming, immersive technologies, and digital platforms.
Participation from leading technology companies, research bodies, and public institutions representing more than 100 countries provides insight into international production systems and regulatory landscapes. Such exchanges support benchmarking in creative AI, animation, gaming, and IP-led content, while opening doors to co-creation, investment, and new market opportunities.
Innovation challenges and strategic dialogues further position Indian enterprises within influential global forums shaping AI standards and digital trade frameworks. Together, these engagements strengthen India’s capacity to expand its creative and AI-driven industries worldwide, while contributing to a responsible, inclusive, and scalable global innovation ecosystem.
Conclusion
The MIB Pavilion at the India AI Impact Summit 2026 demonstrates how India is translating its AI vision into visible, market-ready outcomes led by startups, creators, and innovators. Through a focused showcase of media, gaming, immersive, and creative technologies, the MIB Pavilion highlights the depth of India’s AI capabilities and the growing convergence of technology, culture, and enterprise.
Across five days of structured programming, the pavilion will enable sustained engagement among startups, policymakers, investors, creators, and international stakeholders. Founder-led narratives, policy dialogue, and industry collaboration have together positioned Indian AI innovation as both globally competitive and locally grounded.
By combining startup showcases, creative experimentation, governance discussions, and global market exposure, the pavilion will also reinforces India’s approach to responsible, inclusive, and scalable AI growth. It directly reflects a broader national ambition to build AI-native platforms, strengthen creative economies, and position India as a leading contributor to the global AI ecosystem from the Global South.
