Subhash Ghai’s Whistling Woods partners with Jio to set up lab for virtual reality

Film school Whistling Woods International, founded by filmmaker Subhash Ghai, said it is partnering Reliance Jio Infocomm to set up a new development lab for virtual reality and augmented reality (VR and AR, respectively).

The lab, which will start this month, has been named Whistling Woods Jio VR Lab. It will be set up on the Whistling Woods International campus in Filmcity, Mumbai, the film school said.

The lab will work with the Indian film and media industry in many ways including monthly seminars and workshops.

Jio’s investment in the lab could mean AR and VR content on its applications such as Jio Cinema and Jio TV.

“We strongly believe VR will be the fourth content platform after film, TV and digital, and this lab will create VR filmmakers who will kick-start India’s VR content ecosystem. Reliance Jio, through its leadership in the digital and content ecosystem, will support VR content creation and distribution and make cutting-edge experience available for its customers,” Jyotindra Thacker, president, Reliance Jio, said.  

Reliance Jio has been showing keen interest in adopting new technologies such as artificial intelligence, Internet of Things (IoT) and blockchain in order to streamline operations and provide better customer experience.

Last week, the company said it had started trials of its enterprise IoT services in the country.

The telecom service provider also said the new services would lead to more data consumption on its network, which now runs on improved infrastructure. The company's traffic data for the quarter ended March stood at 5.06 billion GB, a 17.4% growth from the last quarter.

In February, the company had said it was partnering South Korean electronics giant Samsung to deploy a cellular IoT network across India. It had then confirmed that the new service, called NB-IoT (narrowband Internet of Things), was already operational in Mumbai and would soon expand to other parts of the country.

NB-IoT lets a wide range of devices and services connect with each other using cellular telecommunications bands.

In January, Mint had reported that the company would soon come out with a new cryptocurrency or token called JioCoin.