MAM
JWT Bangalore gets 2 ‘finalist’ nominations in TAF
NEW DELHI: JWT Bangalore has emerged as the only Indian agency to manage the ‘finalist’ nomination at The Advertising Festival (TAF). The event takes place at the Disneyland Resort, Paris from 2-5 September.
JWT Bangalore will not be in race for one but for two awards. It has been short-listed for Madura Garments (Trouser Town) campaign in the `Best Use of Outdoor Design’ and Spice Telecom in the `Best Use of Radio’ categories.
The awards function will be held on 4 September. To its credit, JWT Bangalore is among the only three Asian agencies, which have made it to the finals of the advertising festival. Besides JWT Bangalore, Leo Burnett Sydney (two nominations) and Dentsu Young & Rubicam Thailand are the other agencies that will be in the fray.
JWT senior V-P Dhunji Wadia said: “Considering it’s a world stage, the fact that we are the only Indian agency and one amongst a few in Asia makes it even better. The fact that Spice Telecom campaign was a local-regional campaign makes the agency’s effort even more creditable – the Spice campaign was restricted only to Karnataka. Still the campaign is capable of standing out in any world forum and that’s our creative perspective.”
In the `Best Use of Outdoor Design’ category, JWT Bangalore has been short-listed along with five other agencies including Leo Burnett Sydney. For the `Best Use of Radio’ award, JWT will compete against five agencies. In all, there are 15 categories which apart from television, print, radio, cinema and outdoor, have nominations for work in animation, communication technology, media `stunt’, outdoor design and visual or sound among the other categories.
Besides awards, the festival also incorporates a market and features exhibitors from media advertising industries across the board – broadcasting (television, radio, new media), publishing (broadsheets, consumer magazines, listing directories, trade publications), agencies (direct marketing, PR sponsorship) and others, providing multiple opportunities for networking and sales.
The speakers list in the awards function includes WPP Group’s Sir Martin Sorrell and Chris Schroeder of The Washington Post.
MUMBAI: Apple just folded a photonics startup into its empire because when you’re building the future of light, sometimes you need to acquire the blueprint. Apple has quietly acquired key assets from invrs.io, a small AI-focused photonics startup, and brought its founder and sole employee, Martin Schubert, on board, according to a regulatory filing submitted to the European Union in October 2025.
The filing reveals that Apple would take over certain assets from invrs.io while hiring Schubert, a research scientist with prior stints at Meta, Google, and Micron Technology, where he worked on advanced display, semiconductor, and optical technologies.
Invrs.io specialised in open-source frameworks for photonics research, the science of controlling and manipulating light, critical to cameras, sensors, LiDAR, and displays across Apple’s ecosystem. The startup’s tools used AI-guided design to accelerate optical system simulation, optimisation, and benchmarking, aiming to make complex engineering more accessible to AI researchers and hardware developers.
Apple has not disclosed specific plans for integrating the technology, but the acquisition points to deeper ambitions in hardware-level AI. Enhanced light-based modelling could refine camera performance in iPhones and iPads, boost sensor accuracy in wearables, optimise spatial computing in Vision Pro, and advance next-generation displays and LiDAR systems.
Though modest compared with Apple’s blockbuster deals, the move underscores the company’s push to embed AI not just in software but in the physical foundations of its devices. As custom silicon and on-device AI accelerate, photonics expertise at the intersection of light and intelligence could prove a key differentiator.
For a company that once revolutionised screens with Retina displays, quietly snapping up a photonics innovator feels like the next logical step ensuring the light inside Apple’s world shines brighter, sharper, and smarter than ever.
