WAVES OF IMMERSIVE EXPERIENCE: Exploring Ink In Caps's Visual Spectacle at the 2025 Summit

Technology

Sayonika Paul

4 Min

May 21, 2025

The first World Audio Visual and Entertainment Summit (WAVES) 2025, which took place in Mumbai's upscale Jio World Convention Centre from May 1st to 4th, 2025, was no ordinary industry conclave; it was a force gathering, a "symbolic wave of culture, creativity, and global connectivity," expressed Prime Minister Shri Narendra Modi.

expressed Prime Minister Shri Narendra Modi

With the world Media and Entertainment (M&E) sector waiting at a record USD 2.96 trillion, WAVES offered a valuable platform for connecting the Indian M&E sector to the world, driving growth, co-creation, and milestone innovations.

Tasked on behalf of our client, Jio Star, Ink in Caps (IIC) was integral to crafting the engaging context of the vibrant WAVES Summit 2025.

Team IIC was able to design and create five differentiated experience zones successfully, providing 2 robust installations at the Bharat Pavilion under the Ministry of Broadcasting (MIB) and 3 at the Jio Pavilion, showcasing our experiential capabilities and storytelling ability through leading technology and engaging stories, making a lasting impact on the people.

The Initial Objectives

The project kick-started on the first week of April 2025, and our team was given a challenging 20-25 day timeframe by our client Jio Star to ideate and deliver a chain of immersive experiences for the exclusive WAVES Summit 2025.

Jio Star tasked us with the pivotal responsibility of bringing to life the most important elements of the Bharat Pavilion, revolving around the engaging theme of 'Kala to Code' – a tribute to India's three cornerstones of culture: Cinema, Culture, and Celebration, and also Jio Pavelion showcasing the content library of Jio and its subsidiary channels.

Our first brief introduced us to several areas that needed our technical and creative skills to interpret into stimulating and immersive exhibitions of these national interests. Jio Star tasked us particularly to create an immersive experience about the following:

Cultural Influence: Depicting the significant cultural impact of Indian media across time, its centrality in projecting national identity and development.

Jio's Broadcast Might: Highlighting Jio's vast broadcast might and reach across the Indian media landscape through its wide constellation of channels.

Star Sports' Regional Reach: Emphasizing Star Sports' outstanding broadcasting abilities and strategic utilization of many regional languages to strongly connect with various groups of people across the country.

Pro Kabaddi League (PKL): Mud to Mat Success: A projection mapping, AV, and interactive walkthrough will demonstrate Kabaddi's evolution from a rural game to India's second most-watched league, its influence on media and players through a short film and statistical panels.

Constructing a Multisport Nation: An engaging area will mark India's transition to a multisport culture from cricket, with the emergence of ISL, PKL, and the effect of Khelo India through AVs, milestones, and interactive experiences highlighting Olympic Khelo sportspeople, ISL's national heroes, and India's FIFA ranking journey.

Digital Festival: Ram Navami: A spiritual experience will be developed with Amitabh Bachchan in a hologram avatar, explaining Ram Navami stories, which was the iconic live event broadcast on Jio Hotstar.

Cinema: Grand Indian Narratives: An emphasis will be placed on highlighting the journey of Indian cinema towards outwardly grand yet inwardly rooted storytelling that can stand at par with the world, using Brahmastra & Chaava as exemplary instances.

Content for Good: Satyamev Jayate's Impact: Here, the section will showcase the impactful role of the TV show in tackling social problems and creating real change, showing its impact through significant outcomes such as new laws, government programs, and greater social awareness.

Moreover, we locked in 2 concepts for Bharat Pavilion after several iterations:

Mud to Mat (Curved LED): The first concept, "From Mud to Mat to Mega Success", sought to come alive in colors, Kabaddi's spectacular journey. Having been a localized rural sport with limited urban popularity, Kabaddi staged a miraculous comeback with the introduction of the Pro Kabaddi League (PKL) in 2014 under the leadership of Star India.

The idea was to employ the use of an anamorphic screen to provide a juxtaposition between Kabaddi's rural beginnings and the exciting buzz and far-reaching fanfare of the PKL, from its climb to India's second-most watched sport and a strong job driver of sportsmen, coaches, commentators, technicals, and grassroots development.

Ram Navami (Holobox): The second pinned idea for the Bharat Pavilion was the "festival of India's cultural ethos in digital form, brought alive through the experience of Ram Navami". Acknowledging the Ramayana as a unifying cultural account, the goal was to redefine devotional experience for the modern era in India.

Using digital technologies, possibly including holographic narrative and 3D environments with spatialized sound, this space was designed to combine effortlessly tradition and contemporary innovation, opening up a cultural-tech revolution of the experience of religion.

Through several iterations of discussions with our client Jio Star, these two essential ideas for the Bharat Pavilion were kept in focus throughout IIC's brief.

Parallelly, an iterative and dynamic process evolved for the Jio Pavilion. Starting with the discovery of a large pool of ideas, some 15-17 zones in number, the concept was to showcase Jio's content library in new and engaging ways. IIC ultimately designed three different experience zones for the Jio Pavilion:

Kinetic LED: Designed to showcase Jio's brand stories and corporate audio-visual content in a visually engaging and fascinating way.

C-Shaped LED: Created to offer an immersive experience around Mahashivratri, using the LED's distinctive curved shape to enhance the visual storytelling.
Gesture-Based Interactive Table: Dedicated to the story of Star Sports, enabling visitors to discover important milestones, facts, and interesting trivia through natural, gesture-based interaction enabled by Leap Motion technology.

This multi-faceted project involved IIC conceptualizing five unique experiential spaces in the Bharat and Jio Pavilions, both based on their technical capabilities and masterful storytelling.

5 Unique Experience Zones

Following intense rounds of meetings with our client and event organizers, the last five tailor-made immersive zones were reserved for the WAVES Summit. Our team organized the first two for Bharat Pavilion and the last three for Jio Pavilion, highlighting their cutting-edge technology and storytelling potential in both the prime locations of the event.

Let's first take a look at the installations at Bharat Pavilion.

1) Curved LED Anamorphic Wall

The Bharat Pavilion was adorned with an incredible Infinite Curved LED Anamorphic Wall, a remarkable optical illusion based on mathematical accuracy and point of view. From the strategically built viewpoint, the wide curved LED panel became a living 3D experience that invited people into a stratified marvel of pictures that narrated the inspiring tale of the Pro Kabaddi League (PKL) – "From Mud to Mat to Mega Success.”This liquid visual space immersed the audience consciously, with the curve not a cosmetic additive but a necessary part of designing a spatial narrative experience.

The PKL's "mud to mat" odyssey turned Kabaddi into India's 2nd most-viewed sport while creating employment for players, coaches, technicians, and commentators in the process. This professionalization, driven by strategic reforms, promoted development at the grassroots level itself, building a healthy ecosystem in the last 10 years.

The league's appeal went beyond the villages, enthraling the nation. This popularity also generated investment in training academies and infrastructure, further cementing its development from a grassroots level to a mainstream sporting career.

By placing the PKL's electrifying dynamism and huge coverage alongside Kabaddi's humble rural roots, the anamorphic il

lusion constructed its metamorphosis with a compelling sense of movement and depth.

Hologram Installation

The Hologram Installation was an electronic commemoration of India's cultural ethos- Ram Navami- a portion of the Ramayana Epic.

The custom-built Hologram installation gave a vibrant and incredibly real experience centered on the "Celebration of India's cultural ethos digitally," as depicted in the Ram Navami experience.

This hologram marvel, conceptualized by our founder, Mr. Manish Kakkar, was brought to life in a momentous and memorable combination of tradition and state-of-the-art technology, supported by audio-visuals of Shri. Amitabh Bachchan.

This immersive hologram of Amitabh Bachchan was created. With his unique voice and AV presence, he told the Ram Katha, recited Ram chants and shlokas, and narrated the tale of Ram Navami.

The creation was so realistic that it touched the hearts of visitors to a great extent. Interestingly, the content of the hologram was taken directly from Jio Hotstar's live telecast of the Ram Navami festivities.

The stimulating presentation made a long-lasting impact on the audience, even holding the attention of Prime Minister Narendra Modi for a considerable amount of time, reflecting the strength of re-telling cultural narratives using new digital media.

On the agenda next were the installations at Jio Pavilion.

A diverse series of immersive experiences was experienced by entering the Jio Pavilion, with the brand narrative and corporate audio-visuals of Jio Star.

3) Gesture-Based Interactive Table

Inside the Jio Pavilion, the Touchless or gesture-based Interactive Table, driven by a Leap Motion technology device, gave visitors an immersive and intuitive experience of understanding the journey of Star Sports.

Leveraging sophisticated infrared-based hand-tracking, the interactive exhibit enabled audiences to browse, gesture, and get around an information treasure house using nothing but hand gestures, no physical touch or interface.

As seen in the visitor interaction, this allowed for a clean and seamless experience with space for an immersive examination of Star Sports' heritage.

4) Kinetic LED Wall

Kinetic LED was an energetic backdrop for Jio Hotstar's brand narrative, installed in the Jio Pavilion.

Beyond the typical motion-activated screens, the Kinetic LED wall in the Jio Pavilion offered an engaging glimpse of independently animated tiles.

Every tile was coded with precision to move in a choreographed "dance," producing an expressive and flowing visual experience.

This dynamic presentation was an excellent vehicle for the conveyance of the brand narratives and corporate audio-visual content of Jio Hotstar, turning static information into an interesting and engaging spectacle of design and advanced engineering.

Pioneering the 1st time use of this latest technology, the team focused on maximizing the visual impact with a kinetic LED display. This setup featured tiles where the power of every tile would move independently, influencing its content, its aura, and reflecting the scale of Jio Star and all the constellations of all the companies.

With multiple rounds of iterations, we could finally decide on the content. The kinetic LED coding gave rise to the immersive experience, which was end-to-end seamless and the focal point. A lot of visual formatting was done to highlight the content and reveal its impact.

A lot of custom transition effects were created for this, so that the content and visual effects would match the color tile and the moving tile. It was extremely hard to calibrate and convert, but we somehow made it work. This was the most fun and interesting experience that we created.

5) C-shaped LED

The C-shaped LED Wall was an immersive representation of Mahashivratri at the Jio Pavilion.

Providing yet another level of immersive experience to the Jio Pavilion's lineup was the breathtaking C-shaped LED wall. The specially curved screen was intended to surround the audience with a visual interpretation of the Mahashivratri festival.

The permanent spatial constraints posed a special challenge in providing a fully immersive experience for the mass-scale Mahashivratri celebration. To cross this barrier, the team cleverly utilized a C-LED display. High-definition LED tiles were carefully mounted on a custom-built metal framework.

This customized build was designed to surround the viewer's entire field of view, essentially creating an immersive sensation that spanned head to toe within the specified space. The high resolution of the C-LED further compounded this effect, providing a visually dense and engaging experience.

But the path to making it a reality was fraught with pitfalls. The sheer enormity of WAVES, as it was a one-off, was not properly estimated during the planning phases. The huge panel of panellists, such as business icons like the Ambanis, or celebrities like Shah Rukh Khan, Aamir Khan, Rajinikanth, and big-hitting political personalities, PM Modi and Maharashtra CM, did nothing but accentuate the gravity of the event as much as the variety of crowd the event could pull.

Challenges to Navigating Solutions:

Understanding the core of JioStar: The greatest challenge was in profoundly comprehending the very essence and working framework of Jio Star, a giant global broadcaster with a convoluted series of subsidiary firms. This basic comprehension was of prime importance to bring its very essence into meaningful translation as an immersive experience for the Waves Summit.

Operating in a Multi-layered Ecosystem: One of the major challenges was understanding the content ecosystem and operating dynamics of Jio Star and its subsidiaries (BookMyShow, Nat Geo, Network 18). This meant setting down distinct communication and information lines to properly source and integrate their various content assets into a single integrated immersive experience.

Customized Hologram: The hologram required a high-level customization and illumination. Creation of the hologram involved extensive interaction with suppliers for custom hardware manufacturing, indicated by a string of POCs and R&D versions for different media. A major activity was the configuration of 1.5 lakh units of finely calculated lighting so that the imagery would be crisply visible amidst illumination, which called for strong liaison with art and set design teams to avoid conflicts.

Despite such heavy blows, the IIC team never lost heart. The first on-site visit produced a disorganized sight – no specific set-up location, and a server room that was too cramped was ready to jeopardize a smooth process. Still, through sheer determination and tenacious grit, things finally fell into place on the final night before the opening of the summit, to the group's relief and satisfaction

The Wrap Up

WAVES' first day ushered in a milestone event: the visit of Prime Minister Modi to the Bharat Pavilion. He stopped for a longer time than anticipated to look at our holobox.

For four whole days at the conference, we received high acclaim from clients and visitors, respectively, literally overwhelmed at what had transpired. Similarly, the summit also presented lucrative fertile grounds to imagine collaborative possibilities as well as new avenues for IIC.

The immersive experience at Bharat Pavilion was a success. As per reports, over 1 lakh visitors, including very highly respected officials such as PM Modi and Maharashtra Chief Minister, Shri Devendra Fadnavis, External Affairs Minister, Shri S Jaishankar, etc., visited Bharat Pavilion and experienced IIC's innovative endeavors.

This meticulous process, from first client brief to final handover, was a rollercoaster ride of challenges and successes for the IIC team. A heartfelt thank you and our sincere appreciation to our valued client, Jio Star, for providing Ink in Caps with the opportunity to showcase our innovative immersive experiences at WAVES 2025. We are truly grateful for this incredible collaboration.

Our commitment to driving the frontiers of audio-visual and animation technology, even under exceptional pressure and tight timetables, left a lasting legacy for WAVES 2025 and certainly for the future of immersive experiences for the Indian Media and Entertainment industry. The "wave" IIC facilitated at the summit has indeed left a lasting impact.

About the Author

Sayonika Paul
Content Writer