In the early 1700s, a tiny, cash-strapped theological school called the Collegiate School of Connecticut was on the verge of financial collapse. It desperately needed money to construct its very 1st permanent building in New Haven.
The school’s trustees reached out to a wealthy London merchant named Elihu Yale. Yale had spent nearly 30 yrs working for the East India Company at Fort St. George in Madras (now Chennai) looting India & eventually rising to become the Governor-President of the settlement.
While in India, Elihu Yale amassed an immense personal fortune through private trading: specifically in Golconda diamonds, high-grade textiles & spices & by participating in the Indian Ocean slave trade. He was eventually ousted from his post by the East India Company for rampant illegal profiteering & corruption.
In 1718, responding to the school’s plea for help, Elihu Yale sent a massive cargo shipment from London to Boston. The shipment did not contain cash. It contained:
9 large bundles of exotic Indian textiles (including fine muslins, calicos & silks from Madras).
417 books.
A portrait of King George I.
The school sold the Indian textiles & goods in Boston for the staggering sum of £800, which at the time, was enough money to completely fund the construction of their brand-new wooden college building. In pure gratitude for this South Asian windfall, the trustees officially renamed the entire institution Yale College.
Yale University would literally not exist w/o India. Its very name, its 1st major building & its foundational survival were directly paid for by wealth extracted from India.
P.S.: Paintings of Elihu Yale with his family members & slave servant children as painted by artist James Worsdale.
A week from now, on 31st May, 2026 is the 301st birth anniversary of Ahilyabai Holkar – Queen of Malwa – and a woman far ahead of her time.
Ahilyabai was born in village Chundi, in Beed district of Maharashtra. Her father Manokji Shinde was Patil of the village. Once Malhar Rao Holkar stopped by at Chundi enroute to Pune and was so impressed by her that he chose her to marry his son Khande Rao.
After Khande Rao died in 1754, Malhar Rao started training Ahilyabai to be his successor.
After assuming charge in December 1767, she dedicated the state to Shankar (Shiva) declaring that she will manage the affairs of the state for the benefit of the people on the behalf of Shankar, herself remaining only a custodian. Her signature, Shree Shankar appeared in all royal proclamations.
She made Maheshwar the capital of the Holkar State. It is to her credit that during her 30 year reign Malwa remained stable and peaceful, the Holkar dominions remained undiminished and not attacked. Ahilyabai Holkar gave up her earthly existence on 13 August 1795.
She built massive public infrastructure for people’s welfare. Ahilyabai built temples, orphanages, residences and irrigation tanks all over India led a modest personal life. She used to live in a small residence in Maheshwar. She never built anything for herself.
She defended her kingdom and personally led armies into battle. She never plundered anyone. She developed Malwa into a prosperous kingdom.
Ahilya Bai undertook the task of building & renovating sarais, shelters, temples, dharamshalas all over the country. All this was done through Khasgi. Khasgi (meant a fund exclusively for Charitable and welfare activities) had a treasury of its own. It had independent jurisdiction, in matters of civil and criminal.
The Maheshwar Textile Weaving Legacy
She established a Textile weaving industry in Maheshwar – this led to the creation of the famous ‘Maheshwari Saris‘. The British tried to kill this industry during their 200 year brutal colonisation of India, like they did for many indian textile manufacturing hubs. However, the art sustained & survived. The current generation of Holkars run an NGO, Rehwa Society that has done pioneering work to expand the art, which has both led & managed to supply the surge in demand for the great Maheshwari saris & other woven products worldwide. Today thousands of looms exist in and outside Maheshwar providing employment to lakhs esp women.
The Land records system in India – the 7/12 form
Today if you look at any land records in India, there is something called the 7/12 listing under which all lands are marked. The entire 7/12 system and the documentation thereof in this manner was built on top of a system started by Ahilyabai, which was later adopted by the British to create the 7/12 documentation format.
This was originally started by her as a documentation of agricultural land. In Ahilyabai’s rule, agriculture was undertaken in most of her kingdom in sort-of a P-P-P model, wherein the state sponsored the expenses and cultivation of the farmers and the profits were also to be divided between the state and the farmer. Both the state and the farmers prospered.
The documentation of the same was done in 2 forms: Form VII (Sat): Details ownership, occupancy rights, land liabilities, and tax obligations. Form XII (Bara): Captures the agricultural details, such as crops grown, the type of irrigation, and the tiller or cultivator.
Each block of land was a combination of the 2 details as mentioned above.
This was adopted by the British where the name of the system remained (7/12 form) with there being a change in what underlying information of the land was captured in the form.
During Ahilayabai’s regime a trust was set up to ensure independence to the women of the Holkar dynasty so they did not have depend on their male counterparts.
Trade was encouraged and many merchants and farmers flourished. Roads were dug, trees planted, rest houses set for travellers in order to facilitate travel & speedy communication.
Ahilyabai removed all internal indirect taxes for traders and there was no trader tax beyond customs. Her subjects weren’t afraid to display wealth. She brought out the golden era of Malwa which although short lived, was effective.
During her time Maheshwar became a centre for literature and arts. She patronised many sculptors, artists and craftsmen who came to work on its buildings and fort.
From Badrinath to Kedarnath, and from Jagannath Puri to Dwarka and Somnath, the imprint of Ahilyabai Holkar is to be seen. For the maintenance of these structures a separate fund was created. That is why even today all her contributions are functional and maintained.
Ahilyabai rebuilt the Kashi Vishwanath Mandir, 118 years after it was demolished by the armies of several Muslim invaders including Aurangzeb in 1669 A.D.
Pooja & I at the Kashi Vishwanath mandir last December
She contributed to Kailasa Temple Ellora too. The paintings belong to two different periods, the first one of the period of Rashtrakutas while the second exactly superimposing the original one belong to the period of Holkars when the entire structure was given a lime wash and painted with ochre coloured paintings during the period of Ahilya Bai Holkar.
She constructed ghats on the rivers throughout India, built new temples, restored damaged ones, dug wells, step wells, sumps and also started free kitchen for the poor and pilgrims. She not only built temples but also paid for the upkeep of learned pandits for contemplation and preaching of scriptures.
Map showing the temples built by the great Maratha queen Ahilyabai Holkar.
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P.S. Detailed list of projects undertaken by Ahilyabai Holkar:
Mandaleshwar – Shiv Temple Ghat. Omkareshwar (MP) – Mamaleshwar Mahadev, Amaleshwar, Trambakeshwar Temple Jirnnodhar, Gauri Somnath Mandir Dharamshalas, Wells. Datta Mandir Mangaon – Datta Mandir – near Sawantwadi, Konkan Maharashtra. Miri (Nagar Bhairav Temple 1780). Naimabar (MP) – Temple. Nandurbar (1) – Temple, Well. Neelakantha Mahadev – Shivalaya and Gomukh. Nemisharanya (UP) – Mahadev Madi, Nimshar Dharamshala Go-ghat. Nimgaon (Nasik) – well. Ozar (Nagar) – 2 wells and a kund. Panchavati (Nasik) – Shri Ram Temple, Gora Mahadev Temple Dharamshala, Vishweshwar Temple, Ramghat, Dharamshala. Parli Vaijnath – Shree Vaidyanath Mandir. Pandharpur (Maharashtra) – Shri Ram Temple, Dharamshala. Bhanpura – 9 temples and Dharamshala. Manasi Devi – 7 Temples. Bharatpur – Temple, Dharmashala and Kund. Kashi – Kashi Vishwanath Mandir, Shri Tarakeshawar, Gautameshwar, many Mahadev temples, Dasashvamedha Ghat, Janana Ghat, Ahilya & Shitala Ghat, Uttar Kashi & Kapila Dhara Dharamshala, Rameshwar Panchkashi Dharamshala. Kedarnath – Dharamshala and Kund. Karmanshini River Bridge. Kurukshetra – Shiv Shantanu Mahadev Mandir, Panchkund & Laxmikund Ghats. Kumher – Well and Memorial of Prince Khanderao. Maheshwar – hundreds of Temples, Ghats, dharamshalas and houses. Madaleshwar Mahadev Himachal Pradesh – Lamps Ghat. Gokarn (Karnataka) – Rewaleshwar Mahadev Mandir, Holkar wada, Garden and Garibkhana. Gaya (Bihar) Vishnupad Mandir. Jagannath Puri Orissa – Shri Ramchandra Temples, Dharamshala and garden. Shri Ganeshwar Mandir, Ellora (Jyotirling). Gangotri – Vishwanath, Bhairavnath, Annapurna, Kedarnath temples. Chaundi – Shri Mahadev Mandir & Chaudeshwari Temple. Chitrakoot – Pranprathisha of Shri Ramchandra. Gruneshwar (Verul) – Shivalaya Tirth. Handiya – Siddhanath Temple, ghat and dharamshala. Haridwar – Kushawarth Ghat and a huge dharamshala. Hrishikesh – Shreenathji and Goverdhanath temples amongst many others. Jalgaon – Ram Mandir. Jaamghat – Bhumi dwar. Jamvagaon – Swami Ramdas math. Jejuri – Malhar Gautmeshwar Mandir, Martand Temple, Janai Mahadev and Malhar lakes. Besides that she also gave donations for Shri Ram Mandir Ayodhya, Shri Chintamani Ganesh Mandir Ujjain, Shri Ram Mandir at Nasik, Sanganer and Pandharpur, Vasudev Mandir Bhusawal, Ganapati Mandir Sultanpur, Laxmi Narayan Mandir Sambalgram, Vishnupad Mandir Prayag. She also gave grants to mosques, Muslim fakirs and saints.
Parle-G is the largest-selling biscuit in the world. It is manufactured in over 130 factories in India, US, UK, Canada, New Zealand, Middle East, Australia and several other countries. 400 million Parle-G biscuits are baked every day. It is available in over a 100 countries and 4,500 biscuits are consumed every second.
While the company has many products, the Parle G biscuits have annual sales of over INR 8000Cr (1bn US$) just by themselves, which is nearly half of the company’s annual turnover.
It was in the year 1929 when Mohanlal Dayal Chauhan started a small candy factory in Mumbai. Back then, candies were consumed only by the Britishers considering they were highly-priced. Mohan Lal Dayal was motivated, inspired by the Swadeshi Movement, to create an Indian candy and sell it at a lower price, so that the larger Bharatiya population could consume it.
He quit his well-established silk business only to leave for Germany and learn the art of confectionery-making.
When he returned, he had both the necessary knowledge and the necessary equipment (imported from Germany for Rs 60,000 back then). He returned to India in the year towards the end of 1929 and started a small factory with only 12 workers, mostly from his extended family. With just 12 workers and German-imported machinery, the House of Parle was born.
The founder and team got so busy making candies that they forgot to decide the brand name, and eventually they kept it as Parle (named after the area in Mumbai where the factory was located).
After the initial success of orange candy, 10 years later, the founder decided to launch a biscuit which created history. It was Parle Gluco.
Parle-G: G for Genius Parle Gluco continued to grow and yet kept pace with the times. With a stroke of re-branding genius, Parle Gluco transformed into Parle-G in 1982. The ‘G’, which initially represented glucose was playfully re-interpreted as ‘genius’.
Over the decades, Parle-G has become one of the few rare products to have spanned across India’s consumption matrix crossing all boundaries of socio-economic class, geography & age. From having them 2-at-a-time dipped in chai to using crushed Parle G biscuits as the base for some yummy custard & baked desserts – the range of consumption of these biscuits is been incredible.
And, of-course, Parle-G has won multiple awards over the years.
It became the first Indian food product to receive the Monde Selection Quality Award, having consistently won multiple Gold and Silver medals since 1971.
It has also won India’s first World Selection Award (Geneva), awarded for the consistent quality of the original Parle-Glucose biscuit in 1972.
The pricing for the biscuits has been kept extremely competitive. The regular packs of Parle-G are still priced at only INR 2/- (2.1cents) for 6 biscuits (24-25 gms) and INR 5/- (5.2 cents) for a packet of 12-14 biscuits (50gms), and is one of the most affordable biscuits in the world.
During natural disasters and wherever food needs to be airdropped, it is one of the most efficient way of delivering both sustenance and energy. During the pandemic, when the Governments/NGOs were supplying food to the underprivileged, Parle G provided over 30 million packets of biscuits at no cost.
Truly remarkable how Parle-G has been able to sustain its quality and impact on the world for over 55 years now!!!
If you line up all the Parle G biscuits manufactured in a month, they are enough to cover the distance between the earth & the moon, twice… 😁
On April 25, 2026, India’s electricity grid met a peak demand of 256.11 gigawatts. This is the highest single-day peak in the nation’s history. While it is commendable in itself, what is even more remarkable is the absence of a deficit beside it.
The journey…
In 2005, India had an electricity deficit of 12.3% of its own peak demand. By 2007, the shortfall had widened to nearly 16.6%, and close to 18,000 megawatts were unavailable.
The early 2000s were years of genuine electricity poverty. Factories ran on diesel backup generators as a matter of routine. Homes in smaller cities and villages received power for a few hours a day.
Distribution, which is the final link between the grid and the household, was historically the most neglected and most corrupt part of the chain. Electricity theft was widespread, billing was unreliable, and state electricity boards were financially broken.
Reforms here were uneven and politically difficult, but schemes like UDAY, launched in 2015, restructured the debt of state distribution companies and pushed them toward financial viability. The Saubhagya scheme, from 2017, connected the last unelectrified households, around 25 million of them, to the grid by 2019.
India’s solar capacity in 2010 was negligible. Today, it is measured in hundreds of gigawatts. The price of solar panels fell globally by over 90% across this period, and India made a strategic bet to capture that cost decline at scale. Rooftop solar programmes brought electricity generation to homes, factories, and commercial buildings. And the International Solar Alliance, co-founded by India in 2015, helped build global momentum.
The timing proved critical. India’s current peak electricity demand sits in the afternoon, driven by air conditioning in an increasingly hot country. Solar generates hardest in exactly those hours. It’s like a match made in heaven.
On April 25 this year, around 12:30 pm, solar plants and rooftop systems together supplied roughly one-third of all electricity being generated at that moment. Across the full day, solar’s share was around 22%.
India today draws 52% of its electricity from non-fossil sources. More than half of every unit generated comes from sun, water, wind, or nuclear.
The deficit percentage, which once sat stubbornly above 10%, has now collapsed. Since 2024, it has been effectively zero.
Reliable electricity means a small business owner does not budget for a diesel generator as a fixed cost. It means an electric vehicle is practical for someone who cannot afford to be stranded. It means a student in a rural home can study at night without planning around power cuts. It means a hospital runs its equipment on the assumption that the supply will hold.
Electricity reliability is, in the end, a quiet form of equity. When the grid is unreliable, those with money buy backup. Those without simply go without. India’s closing of its power deficit means that the gap no longer falls along economic lines.
The country that once rationed darkness now delivers light on demand, at the moment of highest need, to everyone connected to the grid.
It took two decades and thousands of infrastructure decisions. It is not the kind of achievement that fits in a headline. But on an April afternoon, when 256 gigawatts flowed, and nothing broke, it showed.
While the Battle of Attock is well known and quite famous, what is not as well known is that Attock was not the farthest that the Maratha empire had ever reached. The farthest they reached was Peshawar.
Today, 265 years ago, the Maratha Empire reached its farthest distance away from Pune that it ever reached – over 2000 kms – almost till the borders of Afghanistan.
On 8 May 1758, in the Battle of Peshawar the Marathas defeated Timur Shah Durrani and Peshawar was captured and annexed into the Maratha Empire. The Marathas were led by Raghunath Rao Peshwa & Malhar Rao Holkar, who just days before this had annexed Attock in the famous battle of Attock.
After their victory at Attock, the Shah of Persia Karim Khan then wrote to Raghunath Rao complimenting him on his success and suggested they attack Abdali on two fronts and then divide his territory among themselves, the Persians keeping Kabul and Kandahar while ceding Peshawar and Lahore to the Marathas.
Reporting his success to the Peshwa at Pune, Raghunath Rao wrote “Lahore, Multan, Kashmir and so on, subahs before Attock, ought to be brought under control. Some has been achieved, some more is left which I will soon complete. Ahmed Shah Abdali, his son Taimur Shah and Jahan Khan our army chased, and looted their armies. With the residual force, with difficulty, Taimur Shah and Jahan Shah reached Peshawar which is beyond Attock”.
In his letter, Raghunath Rao also conveyed the Persian king’s proposal. However, he added, “The subahs of Attock and Kandahar have been part of Hindustan from Akbar to Alamgir’s time. Why should we give those to vilayetis (foreigners)?”. Hence, they did not ally with the Shah of Persia and attacked Peshawar themselves. Thus enabling the the Maratha rule to reach its furthest extent. All the way up to Peshawar.
Chakras are taught as ‘energy centres’ divorced from their roots of being linked to ‘the mind’.
And the most annoying of all for us Bharatiyas – Starbucks sells us a beverage named “Chai Tea Latte”, which literally means “Tea with milk Tea with Milk”. Chai means ‘tea with milk’. Even in India, Indian people working in Starbucks call it that. I have yet to come across a bigger example of deracinated disconnection from one’s roots than to see Indians spout that nonsense without cringing!
The world has been marketing India’s fruits but have little to no acknowledgement of the tree’s depth of wisdom.
Ever wondered why the West constantly takes from Indian culture and acts like they invented it? Why your 5,000+ year-old traditions get rebranded as Western discoveries?
In 1452, the Pope issued the Doctrine of Discovery which gave Christian nations permission to take ANYTHING from non-Christian people. Their land. Their gold. Their knowledge. Everything. And claim they “discovered” it. European nations used this for centuries as a moral justification for colonial exploitation.
According to this doctrine, if the West hadn’t ‘discovered’ something, it didn’t exist. Your Yogic practices that had been around for millennia only became ‘real’ when Western experts’ studied it.
Your traditional fashion only mattered when Western designers featured it. Non-Christian knowledge systems were literally considered non-existent until claimed by the West.
So that’s how Columbus ‘discovered’ America. Discovered it from where? for who? It was always there. And millions of people having hundreds of cultures lived there. Columbus was looking for India and was bloody lost when he “discovered” America.
Something was considered valuable only when the West approved of it, rebranded it, and taught it back to you. And if needed, the West wiped out entire cultures to make it happen. The Americas (North & South America) & parts of Africa turning Christian are a clear example of it.
Western culture is still built on Christian supremacy and the belief that Western civilization is superior. The Doctrine of Discovery didn’t disappear it evolved.
Today it lives in how Western institutions decide what’s ‘scientific’, what’s ‘legitimate.’ It’s so deep in their worldview that most Westerners don’t even realize they’re doing it.
The Bible teaches that there is ONLY ONE God and ONLY ONE path to salvation. Non-Christians will never get there.
This shaped how the West sees itself as the world’s teacher and judge. Even secular Western institutions carry this DNA. They see themselves as the authority on what’s real, what matters, and what’s valuable.
That papal document is STILL unchallenged in international law. The psychological framework it created is STILL active.
When the west ‘discovers’ yoga or coins ‘wellness trends’ from Indian practices, they’re following this 550+ year-old document.
Western exceptionalism tells them that if THEY say it’s valuable, it becones valuable.
Your culture was never theirs to take. Your traditions don’t need Western stamps of approval. Your knowledge doesn’t need their validation.
The Doctrine of Discovery tried to erase your knowledge system.
But it survived. Your culture survived. Stop playing by their rules.
Your culture. Your narrative. Your credit. Reclaim it all.
So this was my first Google Cloud Next… Given how much we are all engulfed by the world of Artificial Intelligence, it made total sense for me to dive into that beyond just using it and GCN 2026 seemed like the perfect place to start.
And GCN was truly a rabbit-hole. The deeper I went, the more fascinating it got.
Right out of the gate what I liked about GCN was how hands-on it was. Every conference session was a live / active demo. Almost every second booth had a active / working demo. Was very helpful as the world of AI development / Agentic AI / AI Agents is relatively new for me.
Not just in the sessions/booths, but generally – the theme was ‘build that thing‘ (as you can see in the photo of the entry corridor)…
Firstly, it was very well planned. In a relatively small space in the Mandalay Bay Convention Centre, they had managed to fit in A LOT.
I spent much less time in Conference Sessions and much more time at the booths / showcases, just taking in the workflows, building Agents (very badly I must add – I’m quite bad at it as of now 😭). A lot of it was in the Google Cloud Showcase
Anyway, here’s what was interesting on the showfloor…
AGENTIC SHOWCASES The 4 best showcases for me were the AI for 360 deg Product & Visual Brand Development, Multi-Agent AI System for Fashion Retail Advertising. AI for Character Design and an Instant Shoot & Sketch Agent.
A} AI for 360 deg Product & Visual Brand Design Agent by Mars Chocolates
In this, the user creates their own flavour of chocolates – either Skittles, M&Ms or Snickers. Based on the product and the properties, the Agent then creates an advertising visual imaging campaign for the product.
Check out the video of the same… (sped up for brevity)
It created an Marketing Analysis document, the wrapper design, the vertical poster / ad design & what the key / representative graphic image of the product could be.
B} Multi-Agent AI System for Fashion Retail Advertising Advertising
I tried using it, and it seemed quite good, though now knowing anything about Fashion didn’t help with how well i could use it. Structurally though, it looked really robust…
C} AI for Character Design
Here, you got your photo taken, chose your characteristics and Nano Banana and Veo created the character image and a short animation…
Here’s what I made of myself… 😁
That was funnn!!!
D} Shoot & Sketch Agent
An Agent takes a mug-shot, generates a bunch of image options of you in a few locations around Las Vegas, and then instructs a robotic arm it commandeers to rapidly sketch out the image you choose. While there are other similar workflows that do this, what was special was how quickly it generated the image and executed the sketch. Impressive.
Rather quick, as you can see…
Other than these 4 above, these were some interesting show-floor pieces…
Claude – They unveiled their Claude Design platform and had the ability for people to get their hands dirty in it. It is absolutely kick-ass…
Cloud Gaming – absolutely seamless car racing game run entirely on the cloud. Incredibly smooth.
Kubernetes (K8) optimising workflows – There were a lot of companies working on optimising Kubernetes workloads for cloud workflows, including Video Gaming. Kubernetes (abbreviated as K8s) is an open-source platform (originally developed by Google) designed to automate the deployment, scaling, and management of containerised applications. K8 serves as a container orchestration system that works across multiple servers, ensuring that apps run reliably, efficiently, and with minimal manual intervention.
The AI Agent Lab was much fun… You actually got to understand, learn and build an AI Agent. For those who were proficient, you could build a MAS (Multi Agent System).
The AI Design Workshop – also quite interesting – focused on all kinds of AI-enabled design. From Furniture Design to Graphic Design and everything in between…
Almost ALL the Conference Sessions were packed… and very hands-on…
In most cases – standing-room only if you didn’t get there ahead of time…
All-in-All, Google Cloud Next was highly engaging, and will very much be on my radar to attend going forward.
After all, they also have a puppy-play area where visitors can actually play with puppies… I stopped by in the afternoon when all the puppies were down for their post-lunch nap!!! 🥰🐶🥰
Here goes my recap and highlights of NABShow 2026!
The AdobePrelude
Before NAB officially started, there was the customary Adobe NDA Breakfast Briefing Session, where (under severe NDA), Adobe showcases its roadmap and upcoming products / workflows to select partners. And this was, without doubt, the highlight of the show for me. Of-course, I can’t talk about it in detail, not share any images, but rest assured – over the next few months you will see revolutionary improvements in Premiere Pro, Firefly, After Effects and a massive upscaling of Adobe’s offerings in the world of Audio.
Unfortunaly, this is the ONLY image from the session I can share:
The breakfast was GREAT!!!
NAB CONFERENCE SESSIONS
There were 3 broad themes I noticed – Artificial Intelligence (of-course), Sports, & the Creator Economy. Cloud / Virtualisation was kind-of a sub-theme across the board.
Theme 1: Sports – I was realy happy at the prominent place that was given to Sports, given that it is the last surviving bastion of live-broadcast / live-streaming of content, with live TV in all other areas seeing massive declines. FAST hasn’t been the panacea everyone thought it would be. Broad themes in Sports included Use of AI in sport, Friction-less workflows, Camera to Cloud & Cloud Virtualisation.
Some of the better sessions in Sports were: – Stadiums of the Future: Tech-Driven Venue Experiences – SO Good! – NBC and Google Cloud Are Redefining Live Sports Analysis with AI – Unlocking Live Cloud Production – Immersive Capture in Modern Sports Production – IP Workflows in Mobile Production – Automated Broadcast Production in the PGA Tour
Theme 2: Artificial Intelligence – in AI, there was just too much showcased.
Every 2nd booth had a AI demo. Every 2nd session was on AI. Every product, every workflow had an AI-element in it. There was a lot of it, but a lot of it was also very repetitive. Similar applications across products & services. I was looking for new applications of AI, but not too many were forthcoming.
Some of the interesting AI sessions were: – Powering Intelligent Media: From AI Experimentation to Real‑World Impact – AI as Creator: Who Owns the Future of Hollywood? – Using AI To Make Unscripted Content Better – How Media Companies Are Turning Archives into AI-Ready Assets – Personalize Audience Experiences with Multimodal Generative AI
Some images…
Theme 3: Creator Economy – So the prominence for the Creator Economy came off as a little out-of-place for me, esp in a M&E Tech Conference. Coz there isn’t really much cutting-edge work happening in the Creator Economy. They are basically using existing tech / workflows, albeit in a massively scaled manner – given the number of creators. So I guess NAB needed to bring them into the conversation to help the tech OEMs sell to them as well – given that in volume terms, they outstrip the high-end tech users by a ratio of 1000:1. The Creator Lab / Creator Theatre was well done, but really there was nothing to learn there, just a lot of tech OEMs showcasing their wares to creators and vice-versa.
Other than this, there were a couple of other sessions which I found interesting.
The Sci-Tech Council of the Oscars Academy (Academy of Motion Picture Arts & Sciences), which runs the Scientific & Technical Awards (aka Technical Oscars) did a deep-dive session into how the Technical Oscars are planned, how can one apply, how are they evaluated, etc etc. Very insightful.
The other session (wasn’t really a session, but was a in-booth demo) of the Aputure dynamic chroma-key lighting feature. See it below in the booths recap.
Also, the in-booth demo(s) for Stype was pretty cool.
NAB SHOW FLOOR
The Show Floor was well arranged, broken up between the 3 halls, in such a way that you could spend a day in each hall between the floor sessions and see all the booths.
What struck my eye on the floor:
AINA – They create holograms that run natively on consumer devices – on any screen or in VR to smartphones. This is a first step to immersive, real-world holography instantly accessible – basically the foundation for universal spatial video – a future where all content, from YouTube to Netflix, becomes immersive, holographic with rich spatial visuals. They do this by teaching AI to see and think in volume (3D). Very nice. Was so caught up in the showcase that I forgot to take photos / videos. 😣🤷🏻♂️
STYPE – Excellent blending of AI & innovation in the Virtual Production ecosystem within Stype. AI Glue is their new product, which is excellent. Also their marker-less mo-cap workflow using RedSpy. Spent a lot of time with the Co-founder talking about it.
SONY – The PXWZ300 is a kick-ass Camcorder with a whole load of Content Provenance features + the ability to natively do object / human tracking with basic in-camera features. Plus they unveiled the entire spectrum of their Immersive offerings – the Sony XYN platform as well as showcased their Camera tracking solution for VP – Ocellus. Fantastic!
Aputure – Blew my mind with ImageBasedLighting and Sidus Link Pro. Also their workflow for visual sampling of colours and recreating them as chroma key backgrounds. This is especially useful if foreground elements have significant amounts of green or blue in them (do watch the video fully even though It is a little long). It’s fabulous what they’ve been able to do. Well done Tim Kang…
Also, Aputure launched Nova II, where you get the same output with a 1X1 light, which you would get with a 2X1 light. Very cool.
Sandisk – massive leaps in SSD storage with increased throughput speeds and high storage volumes. Both for portable SSDs and internal SSD storage.
Sennheiser – finally had the public release of their In-headset spatial audio mixing tool. I had seen a beta of this at IBC 2025 and was completely blown away by it. The final release is even better. Well done Sennheiser!!!
Insta360 & Antigravity – they have joined hands to lauch a 360 drone. Incredibly light and with a flying system that is incredibly user friendly. We have bought one and are testing it out currently. Also, spent a lot of time with the Insta 360 co-founder and the Antigravity CEO working on some interesting collabs between WWI & AG.
Tilta – a cool solution for spatial capture using a load of iPhones. It’s not revolutionary as such… Just looked very cool… 🙂
Movin – Marker-less mocap. With a single capture device, supported by multiple lidar boundary sensors, this system does marker-less motion capture. It wasn’t as efficient as the Stype one, given that it needs a lot of specialised hardware, but was of good quality.
Other than this, there were a plethora of booths – most didn’t really have anything breathtaking, but here are images of the somewhat interesting booths / products…
How did the Taiwan Govt increase its tax collection by 75% in a single year from 1949-50 to 1950-51
They did no crackdown. No tax rate hikes. No one time levy. No amnesty scheme. Nothing of the sort.
So, now you’re wondering how?
They launched the “Invoice Lottery” scheme & gamified tax collection.
In Taiwan, all invoices (from buying an apple at a grocery store to buying Mac products in Apple stores) follow the Govt standard format with a unique 8 digit code to identify the invoice. Based on that, in 1950-51, the Taiwan Govt rolled out a simple lottery in which the invoice number of the invoice you got in Taiwan for purchasing items legally, became your lottery ticket.
And these were the simple Lottery Rules:
Every alternate month (i.e. 6 times yearly), on the 25th, they would run a lottery.
Both the winning invoice holders and the stores who issued the invoices in those 2 months, would get cash prizes starting at $63,000 for all numbers matching, reducing down to $63 based on how many numbers of your invoice matched those of the lottery winning numbers – just like it happens with a normal lottery ticket.
And by god did it work!!! And how!!!
In just the launch year of 1951, tax collection rose to $1.6M versus $900K in 1950 (a 75% increase).
So, why did this work?:
Coz the scheme provided for big gains for a small cost: Every shopper & store owner now wanted an official invoice issued, for a chance to win the lottery as the cost was seemingly low for each transaction (just the VAT amount), but potential pay-off was high. This big pay-off drove everyone into legal tax-paid shopping.
Habit-forming across generations: Once society had got into a habit of operating within the legal guardrails across generations, they accepted that as fait accompli.
And that’s how Taiwan gamified tax-paying to gain a massive upside for them, with no blowback or bitching from the public.
This is not simply a history lesson. The famed Taiwan tax lottery still runs to date (at present the winning prize is approx $400,000 (at last check). Taiwan has one of the lowest tax avoidance ratios in the world.
This is from the book “Actionable Gamification” by Yu-Kai Chou. A great read – highly recommended…
Over the past couple of years, Epic Games has let go a few people and downsized its operations (and its marketing presence). Having had friends / acquaintances / people I know who worked there (and no longer do), I was always wondering what was going wrong with the company.
Now I know…
Fortnite Battle Royale catapulted Epic Games into a top 5 position in the video game industry in 2017. Come 2026, Epic Games has become the face of the industry’s biggest layoff as it cut 20% of the company.
Once as popular as Roblox, Call of Duty, Minecraft and Grand Theft Auto, Fortnite has since declined in engagement.
However, Epic Games is far more than just Fortnite, and that’s precisely the problem.
Before Fortnite, Epic Games was primarily known for its Unreal Game Engine, used widely across the video games industry and for virtual production.
As Fortnite took off, Epic Games embarked rapidly into new business areas, like thirt-party games publishing (eg Alan Wake 2), buying studios like Mediatonic, launching a storefront for PC games in competition with Steam and buying the music platform Bandcamp in 2020 during the pandemic.
But the rapid diversification has not worked out well. In 2023, they sold Bandcamp to a new buyer and all 800 people who worked on it were laid off (only some of them were hired by the new buyer). This highlighted a strategic failure to blend music streaming into Fortnite, which was strange as in-game concerts are hugely popular generally.
Epic Games also took a big hit (around $6 billion in annual revenue from 2020-2025) when Epic Games’ founder and CEO, Tim Sweeney challenged Apple and Google on their App Store / Play Store policies. This led to Fortnite’s removal from iOS and Android devices for several years as the companies battled in court over whether it was illegal for Apple/Google to block third-party payment options outside of apps (which Fortnite tried to avoid the 30% cuts of in-app purchases). While Epic Games achieved a win in 2025, Apple is still contesting the decision and Fortnite remained off smartphones until last year.
Mobile gaming revenues are nearly 50% of the global gaming market (90%+ in countries like India) for many years now, so 5 years of no mobile revenues is a big hit, even more so as it skipped a whole gaming generation on the mobile.
The silver lining for Epic Games remains its partnership with Disney, which invested $1.5 billion in 2024 to explore in-game Fortnite experiences based on Disney IPs, including a dedicated section of Fortnite to function as a Disney universe (yet to launch). The removal of 1,000 jobs at Epic Games is possibly a dramatic course of action meant to streamline the company into sensible business models amid the pressure of delivering to Disney and to re-invent Fortnite, continue to build Unreal Engine and possibly look solidifying its core businesses.
