AI Transforms Film, Startup Funding Rebounds, Wagh Bakri Goes Digital

Artificial intelligence is profoundly reshaping the landscape of filmmaking, from pre-production to content creation, while the Indian startup ecosystem experienced a notable rebound in weekly funding. This week’s business developments also feature a significant capital raise by gaming giant Nazara and the strategic digital evolution of the century-old tea brand Wagh Bakri.

AI’s Impact on Filmmaking

AI is fundamentally changing the nature of cinema, moving beyond traditional backstage utilities like storyboarding and VFX cleanup to become central to the creative process. Studios and creators are now leveraging generative AI systems to construct entire scenes and immersive worlds, tasks previously deemed too expensive or technically challenging. This shift is democratizing storytelling by compressing constraints of huge budgets and long timelines, making cinematic experiences more accessible to independent creators and smaller studios. However, this cheaper approach does not equate to effortlessness, as AI-native productions still demand significant compute resources, proprietary workflows, refinement, and crucial human oversight. The emerging model appears to be a hybrid, where AI expands scale and flexibility, while human directors, editors, and VFX artists retain authorship and creative judgment.

Indian Startup Funding Rebounds

Indian startups collectively raised $187.4 million last week, marking a substantial 260% increase from the $52 million secured in the preceding week. The number of deals also improved, rising to 21 from 14. FirstClub and Innefu emerged as the top-funded startups, securing $55 million and $30 million respectively. The ecommerce sector recorded the highest number of deals with eight, while consumer services attracted the largest funding infusion at $55 million. Seed-stage funding more than doubled to $3.1 million, with Antler, IAN Alpha Fund, and Rainmatter being the most active investors, backing two startups each.

Wagh Bakri’s Digital Transformation

The century-old tea company Wagh Bakri, founded in 1919, strategically initiated its digital journey in 2016 by integrating online channels as a supportive engine for its extensive offline network. This patient approach has resulted in ecommerce now contributing 8% of the company’s revenue, which translates to over ₹200 crore based on a projected FY26 revenue of ₹2,500 crore. To future-proof its operations, Wagh Bakri is now adopting AI models for seasonal forecasting, yield estimation, demand planning, and tracking, aiming to enhance planning accuracy and procurement efficiency across its supply chain.

Nazara Technologies Raises Capital

Listed gaming giant Nazara Technologies announced its board’s approval for the allotment of 1.82 crore warrants through a preferential issue at ₹260 apiece, successfully raising over ₹474 crore. Key participants in this issue include Fidelis Global, S Gupta Family Enterprises, and Founders Collective Fund. Nazara has already received approximately ₹118.5 crore upfront, representing the initial 25% warrant subscription amount. Warrant holders have an 18-month window to convert these instruments into equity shares by remitting the remaining 75%. The company intends to deploy these proceeds primarily to fund strategic acquisitions, such as the recently announced Bluetile and BestPlay transactions, and to accelerate growth across its existing business verticals.

The Evolving Cost of AI Tools

The shift by GitHub to usage-based pricing for its Copilot AI coding assistant is poised to significantly increase costs for startups. This transition from flat subscriptions to token consumption is compelling engineering teams to re-evaluate their budgets, workflows, and tool selections. Many startups are actively seeking more cost-effective models or modifying their Copilot usage, often by segmenting work into modular chunks to mitigate token-heavy processes. Industry executives view this as a broader pricing recalibration, driven by the escalating compute intensity of agentic coding, leading to AI tools being managed more like infrastructure rather than traditional software subscriptions.

Vobiz.ai’s Role in India’s Voice AI Boom

Vobiz.ai, a Bengaluru-based startup founded in 2025, is addressing the critical underlying telecom infrastructure challenges impacting India’s booming voice AI sector, specifically latency, routing, and reliability. The company is developing an AI-first telephony infrastructure layer centered on a single-hop architecture to minimize latency and enhance call quality. Its platform offers programmable APIs and AI-optimized routing, dynamically balancing performance, cost, and language requirements. Vobiz.ai embeds AI for features like noise suppression, echo cancellation, packet routing, and spam detection, claiming to have reduced telephony latency to below 80 milliseconds (P95), crucial for natural human-AI conversations. Since its late 2025 launch, the platform has scaled from 1 lakh monthly calls to over 10 lakh daily calls, maintaining a 98% customer retention rate, and is now being adopted by enterprises across fintech, logistics, and real estate, moving beyond its initial voice AI startup client base.