Films Get The AI Treatment, Wagh Bakri’s Slow Brew & More

AI Takes On Filmmakers

AI is starting to change what cinema is. From AI-assisted pre-production to experiments like JioStar’s AI Mahabharat clocking millions of views, the technology is ushering the film industry into an entirely new medium. So, will AI democratise storytelling?

A New Medium: For years, filmmakers treated AI as a backstage utility for storyboarding, dubbing and VFX cleanup, but rarely central to the creative process. This has now changed. Studios and creators are now using GenAI systems to build entire scenes and worlds that would once have been too expensive or technically difficult.

Startups Fill The Gap: AI startups, too, are carving out a niche in filmmaking by building AI-native studios, tools, and infrastructure that go beyond traditional production workflows. This has enabled faster iteration, lower costs, and entirely new storytelling formats designed specifically for scalable cinematic experiences.

The Shifting Economics: The deeper disruption is economic. Epics, fantasy worlds, war sequences, and stylised cinematic universes have traditionally demanded huge budgets, large crews and long timelines. AI is beginning to compress those constraints, lowering the cost of experimentation and making storytelling more accessible to smaller studios and independent creators.

The Caveat: But cheaper does not mean effortless. AI-native productions still require compute, proprietary workflows, middleware, refinement, and human oversight. In many cases, the biggest expense remains people, not models.

Need For Human Control: Even as generative video matures, the hardest problems are consistency, controllability, and cinematic coherence. Studios still rely on directors, editors, VFX artists, and production designers to preserve intent and quality. This is why the emerging model appears to be hybrid – AI is expanding scale and flexibility, while humans retain authorship and judgement.

As studios build AI-native pipelines and platforms, will the next era of Indian cinema be defined by who can orchestrate the story? Let’s find out…

From The Editor’s Desk

Weekly Startup Funding Rebounds

• Indian startups cumulatively managed to raise $187.4 Mn last week , up 260% from $52 Mn raised in the preceding week. Deal count also improved to 21 deals as against 14 recorded in the preceding week.
• FirstClub and Innefu emerged as the most funded startups last week, bagging $55 Mn and $30 Mn, respectively. Ecommerce saw the highest number of deals at eight, while consumer services emerged as the most funded sector with $55 Mn infusion.
• Seed stage funding jumped to $3.1 Mn last week, more than double from the $1.5 Mn raised by startups at this stage in the preceding week. Antler, IAN Alpha Fund and Rainmatter emerged as most active investors, backing two startups each.

Wagh Bakri’s Slow Brew

• Wagh Bakri began its digital journey in 2016. But instead of treating ecommerce and quick commerce as a standalone disruption, the 1919-founded tea company layered online channels as a support engine onto its deep offline network.
• Today that patient approach has produced a channel mix where ecommerce drives 8% of the revenue. This means the digital layer, despite being small in proportion, is already worth more than ₹200 Cr on the projected FY26 revenue of ₹2,500 Cr.
• Now, the legacy tea brand is trying to future-proof its business by leveraging AI models for seasonal forecasting, yield estimation, demand planning and tracking to improve planning accuracy and procurement efficiency.

Nazara Raises ₹474 Cr 

• The listed gaming giant’s board has approved the allotment of 1.82 Cr warrants via a preferential issue at ₹260 apiece, raising over ₹474 Cr. Fidelis Global, S Gupta Family Enterprises, Founders Collective Fund, among others participated in the issue.
• Nazara has received around ₹118.5 Cr upfront as the initial 25% warrant subscription amount from the investors. Under the structure, warrant holders can convert the instruments into equity shares within 18 months by paying the remaining 75%.
• The company intends to use the proceeds from this fundraise to primarily be used to support strategic acquisitions, including the recently announced Bluetile and BestPlay transaction, and to accelerate growth across its existing business verticals.

Mixed Week For Startup Stocks

• Of the 57 new-age tech stocks under Inc42’s coverage, 31 fell in the range of 0.03% to nearly 10% last week. The remaining 26 gained between 0.04% and 16%. The mixed week came amid the broader market turmoil due to ongoing geopolitical tensions.
• BlueStone and CarTrade emerged as the biggest winners, while PB Fintech and Meesho were the biggest losers.
• Next week, Indian markets are expected to react to developments around inflation data, foreign portfolio flows, global cues, and ongoing monsoon progression. The conflict in West Asia will also likely weigh on the markets.

The Token Bill Comes Due

• GitHub’s shift to usage-based Copilot pricing is all set to make AI coding far more expensive for startups. As token consumption replaces flat subscriptions, engineering teams are being forced to rethink budgets, workflows and tool choices. 
• Many startups are already reacting, searching for cheaper models to rein in costs. Others are reworking how they use Copilot and reserving it for selective tasks and breaking work into modular chunks to avoid token-heavy loops.
• Industry executives see this as part of a bigger pricing reset as agentic coding drives up compute intensity. This has resulted in a new operating reality where AI tools are increasingly managed like infrastructure rather than software subscriptions. 

Inc42 Markets

Inc42 Startup Spotlight

Fixing The Invisible Layer Of India’s Voice AI Boom

Voice AI may be booming, but its weakest link lies beneath the surface. The underlying telecom infrastructure struggles with latency, routing, and reliability at machine scale. Vobiz.ai is betting that fixing this invisible layer will define the next phase of voice AI.

Vobiz’s Telecom Stack: Founded in 2025, the Bengaluru-based startup is creating an AI-first telephony infrastructure layer. At its core is a single-hop architecture designed to minimise latency and improve call quality. The platform offers programmable APIs and AI-optimised routing to dynamically route workloads to balance performance, cost, and language needs.

The AI Edge: Vobiz.ai embeds AI to offer a host of features, including handling noise suppression, echo cancellation, packet routing, and spam detection. On the back of this, it claims to have reduced telephony latency to under 80 milliseconds (P95), a critical threshold for maintaining natural conversations between humans and AI agents.

All Set For Production: Since launching in late 2025, the platform claims to have scaled from 1 Lakh monthly calls to over 10 Lakh daily calls, with 98% customer retention. While early traction came from voice AI startups, enterprises across fintech, logistics, and real estate are now adopting the platform as voice AI moves into production.

As voice AI matures, can Vobiz.ai quietly become the backbone of scalable AI communication in India?

Infographic Of The Day

India’s luggage market is now packed with everyone from legacy leaders to fast-growing D2C challengers. From Safari to Mokobara, which luggage brands are trying to define the modern Indian traveller?

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