Gaming
Game on campus as Samsung powers College Rivals Season 3
MUMBAI: When lectures pause and thumbs take over, India’s campuses are increasingly turning into battlegrounds. Ampverse DMI has roped in Samsung as the title sponsor of College Rivals Season 3, placing the Galaxy S25 Ultra at the heart of competitive collegiate gaming.
Esports has been quietly but rapidly levelling up across Indian colleges, with student gamers demanding devices that can keep pace with long sessions, split-second reactions and visually intense gameplay. Tournaments like College Rivals have become testing grounds where flagship smartphones face real pressure not lab benchmarks, but sweaty, high-stakes matches.
At the core of this season is Samsung’s Galaxy S25 Ultra, powered by the Snapdragon 8 Elite for Galaxy, a customised processor built for heavy lifting. Compared to the previous generation, it delivers a 40 per cent boost in NPU performance, 37 per cent in CPU and 30 per cent in GPU numbers that matter when milliseconds decide winners.
Samsung says the hardware is tuned for sustained play, not just bursts of speed. The device features a 6.9-inch Dynamic Amoled 2X display with a 120Hz refresh rate and anti-reflective coating, while a vapour chamber that is 40 per cent larger than before works alongside tailored thermal materials to keep temperatures in check during intense sessions.
Under the hood, the Galaxy S25 series brings advanced AI-driven image processing, including ProScaler, which improves display image scaling quality by up to 43 per cent. It also integrates Samsung’s mobile Digital Natural Image engine directly into the processor to improve power efficiency, a quiet but critical upgrade for marathon gaming.
On the graphics front, advanced ray tracing and a Vulkan engine aim to push visuals closer to console-level realism, improving both rendering and computing workloads during gameplay.
For organisers, the partnership is about more than devices. College Rivals Season 3 is expanding to over 70 colleges across 20 cities, introducing additional qualifiers and new team-based BGMI formats designed to raise the competitive bar. The scale reflects how campus esports is shifting from niche clubs to mainstream youth culture.
Ampverse and DMI see the platform as a pipeline rather than a one-off tournament, a space where student gamers test themselves, brands test technology, and grassroots competition inches closer to professional pathways.
As esports continues to spill out of bedrooms and into auditoriums and college grounds, College Rivals Season 3 signals a simple truth: for India’s gamers, the campus is no longer just a place to study, it’s where the next match begins.
Gaming
Bluestone FY26 revenue rises to Rs 2,436 crore, turns profitable
Q4 profit at Rs 31 crore, full-year profit at Rs 13 crore vs loss last year.
MUMBAI: From sparkle to numbers, Bluestone seems to be polishing more than just jewellery this year. Bluestone Jewellery and Lifestyle Limited reported a sharp turnaround in FY26, with revenue from operations rising to Rs 2,436 crore (Rs 24,364 million), up from Rs 1,770 crore (Rs 17,700 million) in FY25. The company posted a full-year profit of Rs 13 crore (Rs 131.79 million), a significant recovery from a loss of Rs 222 crore (Rs 2,218 million) a year ago.
Total income for the year stood at Rs 2,486 crore (Rs 24,860 million), compared to Rs 1,830 crore (Rs 18,300 million) in the previous year, reflecting both topline growth and improved operational momentum.
The March quarter, however, told a more nuanced story. Revenue from operations came in at Rs 681 crore (Rs 6,814 million), down from Rs 748 crore (Rs 7,486 million) in the year-ago period, though higher than Rs 461 crore (Rs 4,613 million) in the preceding December quarter. Net profit for Q4 stood at Rs 31 crore (Rs 311.81 million), compared to Rs 68 crore (Rs 688 million) a year earlier, but a clear reversal from a loss of Rs 51 crore (Rs 512 million) in Q3.
Margins were shaped by higher input costs, with raw material consumption rising to Rs 2,204 crore (Rs 22,043 million) for the full year, alongside employee benefit expenses of Rs 282 crore (Rs 2,824 million) and finance costs of Rs 210 crore (Rs 2,104 million). Other expenses came in at Rs 371 crore (Rs 3,715 million), slightly lower than Rs 393 crore (Rs 3,938 million) in FY25.
On the balance sheet front, total assets expanded to Rs 4,961 crore (Rs 49,610 million) as of March 31, 2026, from Rs 3,532 crore (Rs 35,322 million) a year earlier, driven largely by a surge in inventories to Rs 2,672 crore (Rs 26,718 million). Equity also strengthened to Rs 1,803 crore (Rs 18,030 million), nearly doubling from Rs 911 crore (Rs 9,107 million).
Cash flows reflected the cost of growth. Net cash used in operating activities stood at Rs 199 crore (Rs 1,990 million), while investing activities saw an outflow of Rs 239 crore (Rs 2,392 million). Financing activities, however, generated Rs 497 crore (Rs 4,971 million), helping the company end the year with cash and cash equivalents of Rs 108 crore (Rs 1,075 million), up from Rs 49 crore (Rs 487 million).
Earnings per share for FY26 came in at Rs 1.10, a sharp improvement from a negative Rs 79.74 in FY25, underlining the shift from losses to profitability.
With revenue scaling up, costs still glittering on the higher side, and profitability finally back in the black, BlueStone’s FY26 performance suggests a business mid-transition less about shine alone, and more about sustaining it.
