Digital
Squadstack AI helps Stage cut calls by 55 per cent and costs by 70 per cent
MUMBAI: Who needs hold music when your helpline has brains of its own? In a record-breaking makeover of customer support, Squadstack.ai’s Humanoid AI Agent Stack has helped regional OTT platform Stage cut through the chaos deflecting 55 per cent of calls, boosting CSAT to 86 per cent, and slashing support costs by 70 per cent in just six weeks.
For Stage, which streams hyperlocal hits in Haryanvi, Rajasthani, and Bhojpuri, the timing was crucial. Soaring call volumes over payments and refunds had overwhelmed its human agents. Enter Squadstack.ai’s AI agents trained on over 600 million conversations who not only handle refund requests with empathy but also recommend shows mid-conversation, blending service with engagement like a pro.
The results speak louder than the dial tone. With an average handling time of 46 seconds and instant responses to nearly 90 per cent of leads, Stage’s users are finally getting the support they deserve, in their own dialects. “We couldn’t scale with human agents alone, but with AI, customers feel heard in the language they’re most comfortable with,” said Stage co-founder Harsh Tripathi.
Beyond speed, Squadstack.ai ensures compliance too, meeting ISO 27001 and SOC 2 standards while adhering to strict DND norms. As Squadstack.ai co-founder & CEO Apurv Agrawal put it, “This partnership validates our vision of scalable, secure, and empathetic engagement.” With Stage setting the stage for AI-powered support, India’s digital platforms may soon be dialing into a future where machines don’t just talk, they truly listen.
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.
