Immersive Installations in Entertainment: Lessons from WAVES 2025 Tech Showcase

WAVES 2025 in Mumbai was more than a rally for the media and entertainment community — it was a live laboratory where narrative, engineering, and place-making met head-on. Between May 1–4 the convention floor at the Jio World Convention Centre became a proving ground for installations that did more than dazzle: they anchored stories, guided attention, and turned casual browsers into listeners and participants. The Bharat Pavilion and the Jio Pavilion curated by Jio Star offered five distinct immersive zones that combined spectacle with purposeful design, drawing industry leaders, cultural custodians, and a very large, engaged public.

For marketing leaders, brand heads and experience directors, the exhibit provides a compact playbook: how to design installations that scale emotionally, perform technically, and deliver measurable business outcomes. Below I break down the concrete lessons from the showcase — designed to be directly applicable for anyone planning an experience centre, product launch, or brand activation.

The strongest moments at WAVES didn’t come from raw pixel density or novelty alone; they came when content and structure worked together to tell a single story. The Infinite Curved LED Anamorphic Wall, for example, didn’t exist merely to show high-res footage — it told the ten-year journey of the Pro Kabaddi League through a motion anamorphic illusion that made history feel immediate and physical. That choice — use a highly specific visual technique to serve a focused story — is the difference between “pretty” and “memorable.”

Practical takeaway: pick one clear narrative for each zone and choose the technical medium that amplifies that narrative. Don’t layer competing stories across the same canvas.

Large installations demand rigorous engineering and rehearsal. The project combined high-fidelity content with complex hardware — from metal fabrications for the C-shaped wall to independently powered LED tiles — and that requires a production mindset: checklists, redundancies, calibration runs, and a strong onsite ops team. The result at WAVES was not only a striking presentation but reliable, consistent performance across long show hours and heavy footfall.

Practical takeaway: treat launch day like the tenth day of a month-long activation. Expect volume, schedule burn-in, and design for maintainability and uptime.

The Bharat Pavilion framed its content under the theme “Kala to Code,” intentionally coupling cultural heritage with contemporary media narratives. When your content connects to ritual, history or national sentiment, editorial discipline matters: voice, tone, and the handling of sacred content must be carefully considered to avoid misinterpretation. The holographic narration of Ram Katha at the pavilion is an example of high-visibility cultural content executed with clear editorial oversight.

Practical takeaway: when dealing with heritage or faith, build an editorial committee and run sensitivity reviews. Involve subject experts early to ensure authenticity and respect.

1. Prioritize editorial clarity. Build each physical installation around a single, defensible story.

2. Design for discovery. Make interactions legible in three seconds; make rewards meaningful in three minutes.

3. Architect for durability. Plan for continuous use and quick maintenance access.

4. Measure meaningful engagement. Dwell time, repeat visits, and post-visit actions tell you more than headline reach.

Create modular media assets. Your exhibit should fund at least three downstream pieces of content for earned and owned channels.