Immersive Tech Push: Rs 250 Crore for AVGC Creator Labs

Immersive technologies are spreading through India's classrooms, museums, city offices and studios, and the Ministry of Information and Broadcasting is backing them through the AVGC-XR ecosystem, which covers Animation, Visual Effects, Gaming, Comics and Extended Reality. The sharpest signal of intent is money: the Union Budget 2026-27 set aside Rs 250 crore for AVGC Content Creator Labs in 15,000 secondary schools and 500 colleges, with the Indian Institute of Creative Technologies (IICT), Mumbai, as the nodal agency for planning and rollout.

What the technologies are

Extended Reality (XR) is the umbrella term for three forms. Virtual Reality builds a wholly digital surrounding; Augmented Reality lays digital information over the real world; and Mixed Reality lets digital objects interact with physical ones. Alongside them sit 360-degree video, which lets a viewer look in every direction, and haptic technology, which returns touch through vibration and pressure.

The market and the money

India's immersive technology market earned USD 1,259.5 million in 2023 and is projected to reach USD 7,818.7 million by 2030, a compound annual growth rate of 29.8 per cent, which would make India the fastest-growing regional market in Asia Pacific. The gaming segment alone is expected to climb from 3.8 billion dollars in 2024 to 9.2 billion dollars by FY29.

The institutions behind it

The AVGC Promotion Task Force was set up by the Ministry in April 2022 on three principles: public-private collaboration, inter-ministerial convergence and an integrated approach. On its advice the Government created a National Centre of Excellence, which took shape as IICT in 2025; as of March 2026 it ran 18 courses with over 135 students, working with Google, Meta, Adobe and Netflix. MeitY's GENESIS scheme, launched in 2022 for Tier-II and Tier-III cities, aims to support about 1,600 tech startups over five years and currently backs 84 AR/VR startups and 106 incubators. WaveX is the Ministry's media-tech accelerator.

Where it is already in use

The Department of Telecommunications runs Sangam: Digital Twin, tying digital twins to 5G, IoT and artificial intelligence; the Varanasi Urban 3D Spatial Planning project uses the idea, and a National Digital Twin for major urban centres is planned by 2035. In heritage, JATAN software has digitised eight national museums and two Archaeological Survey of India museums, whose collections sit in the Museums of India repository, while ASI museums at Hampi and Nalanda offer mobile virtual tours. IIT Madras is building AR and VR lessons for rural schools, including an application that opens up 500 years of Indian history.

States with their own policies