iWorld
Vossle witnessed an average spike of 200% in its sign-ups over the last 6 months: cofounder Prafulla Mathur
Mumbai: Augmented reality (AR) isn’t just a fancy term anymore. It has, in fact, become a much sought-after means of accomplishing brand goals. The major factors driving the growth of web AR are the booming gaming industry and the rapid penetration of the internet, which are driving brands across the world to adopt web AR to increase their engagement with customers on their websites.
Here’s where Vossle, a cloud-based, no-code web AR development SaaS platform, comes into the picture.
Launched in January 2021, Vossle was co-founded by Prafulla Mathur and Pulkit Mathur. According to the duo, with the platform, businesses can create augmented reality in under a minute. It requires no app downloads to experience world targets, image target-based campaigns, games, or face detection-based try-ons using Vossle’s core AR+AI engine. It reaches millions of users instantly with an app-less AR experience that works on every modern smartphone browser the moment you publish it.
Prafulla Mathur and Pulkit Mathur are serial tech entrepreneurs, and are also the founders of Queppelin, a global metaverse development company.
Vossle raised funds from Nimbuzz ex-CEO Vikas Saxena. Nimbuzz was acquired by the UK’s New Call Telecom for $250 million. Vossle grew quickly and now operates in Gurugram and New York.
In an exclusive confab with Indiantelevision.com, Vossle co-founder Prafulla Mathur discusses the application of Web AR by various brands and across categories, how it is being used in the advertising and marketing space, and so much more.
For starters, the global augmented reality (AR) and virtual reality (VR) market size was valued at Rs 1,222.7 billion in 2020 and is projected to reach Rs 37,073.65 billion by 2030, registering a CAGR of 40.7 per cent.
Discussing the expansion plans of Vossle over the next two years, Mathur reveals, “We are expanding Vossle technology teams as we are releasing new product features. Our current teams are in India and New York (USA), and we will add further teams at these offices. We are also adding more customer support teams (both through email, phone, and the Vossle tech forum) to help our customers.
“Elaborating on Vossle being a no-code platform, Mathur reveals that it democratises AR for everyone by removing the dependence on development/coding teams. “You can think of Vossle as Shopify for web AR. With Shopify, businesses can create websites without writing any code and do not have to bother with hosting them. Similarly, with Vossle, businesses can create various types of AR without any coding knowledge and use them out-of-the-box as the created AR experiences are also automatically hosted on Vossle,” he explains.
About the subscription model: Apart from a free trial, Vossle offers two subscription plans, namely, commercial and enterprise plans. In the free trial, users can create unlimited AR experiences with 100 free views. The commercial plans are for $99 per month, wherein users can create various types of AR experiences like in-line AR, face filters, try-ons, games, world tracking experiences, image tracking experiences, green screen chroma key videos, and so on. Users can create unlimited experiences and are offered 10,000 views + $0.01 per extra view. In the enterprise plans, along with all the commercial plan benefits, users can avail themselves of the option for white labelling and custom branding.
Use cases of Vossle’s technology
One of the most eminent use cases of Vossle’s technology is that of in-line AR being used for improving website search engine optimization (SEO). Any effective SEO strategy aims to keep visitors on the website for longer session durations. Vossle’s inline AR Feature makes it possible by embedding AR experiences inside a website, which has a 90-times higher engagement rate from website visitors.
Mathur emphasises that AR is also utilised for product packaging. Brands which integrate AR into their packages are able to capture the audience way more than their competitors. This also gives analytics and insights on customer profiles, store level sales, and customer engagement analytics and makes brands better prepared to update inventory at the highest engagement stores.
Advertising and marketing also constantly utilise AR. “Traditional marketing strategies are no longer sufficient to stay up with the times. The key to creating a digitally transformed company is to build upon new strategies such as integrating AR into business models,” points out Mathur. For instance, Tanishq, a product of the Tata Company, is one such example of excellent AR marketing. The company used Vossle’s virtual try-on feature to make a gorgeous 3D reproduction of their newest jewellery and made it possible for users to virtually put it on.
Gaming is another instance wherein AR is used extensively. Nothing compares to AR for attracting audiences, engaging their attention for longer sessions, and boosting click-through rates. Web AR games amplify this even further. For example, Pond’s, a major skincare brand from Hindustan Unilever (HUL), needed a smart, potent, and engaging marketing strategy to connect and influence the younger audience and expand their loyal customer base. Thus, the brand created a unique web AR game on Vossle—users have to pop the bubbles with their facial movements. With each bubble they pop, their skin becomes more radiant and glowing. The game also has an end-to-end ecommerce flow with integrated discount coupons.
Another example is that of a web AR experience of a 3D basketball game that can be played by scanning the code. The player has to shoot baskets through the hoop with their finger. This is just one of the many examples of how any idea can be turned into a web AR game with Vossle.
AR being heavily applied in e-commerce. Online retail has already started adopting 3D AR product visualisations. Amazon is already offering 3D product visualisations, Lenskart (a prominent eyewear e-commerce player in India) offers eyewear try-ons, and Tanishq has offered Vossle jewellery try-ons. Mathur says, “This not only improves the shopping experience by allowing customers to visualise and virtually try-on a product before buying, it also reduces returns as the customers are making an informed decision.”
Education is also an additional use case of AR. Players in the education space are now integrating Vossle into their online courses to explain concepts in a unique way by providing a real-life context to the students through AR. This interactive way of learning results in faster understanding and higher knowledge retention.
Web AR – led promotions and the effect of web AR on sales
Mathur brings out, “We witnessed an average of a 200 per cent jump in our monthly Vossle sign-ups over the last six months. Many of these signups are from brand marketers or their agencies. Additionally, some of the largest marketing, advertising, and creative agencies have become Vossle’s service partners, clearly indicating the huge investments that the brands are making towards creating web AR campaigns.
“Talking about the effect of web AR on sales, Mathur elucidates that as the users’ gaze times are very high when viewing AR, they stay for longer durations on brand websites when AR is embedded on the page. This improves the websites’ SEO rank and hence drives traffic, resulting in higher sales.
Brands selling their products online also give ads on Google, which is called search engine marketing (SEM). Inline AR on its landing page increases the quality score of such ads, reducing the ad rates for the brand and resulting in more targeted users being able to see it within the same budget.
Additionally, brands that integrate AR into their packages are able to capture the audience way more than their competitors. “One of the recent campaigns we did for an FMCG company received 500K views in a month on their web AR experience through their packaging. This resulted in higher sales for the brand,” says Mathur.
Brands and categories utilising Vossle’s web AR technology
Along with many others, some of the few brands that Vossle is already working in tandem with are Pond’s, Tanishq, and Emirates NBD, which is a banking behemoth in the Middle East and uses Vossle web AR to wish their users on every festival like Mother’s Day or Chinese New Year.
Speaking about the categories implementing AR, Mathur states that it is used for inline AR—website owners from across education, retail, furniture, jewellery, and consumer goods like beauty products, etc. are taking a lead in using inline web AR.
It is also employed for packaging-based AR implementations. Consumer packaged goods (CPG) are leading the way in offering web AR experiences to engage customers. They have millions of packages on superstore shelves and in consumers’ homes, which is a huge marketing opportunity they can leverage.
Reach, target group and brand experiences for consumers
While deliberating over the kind of reach that web AR has, Mathur says that it works in browsers (Chrome, Safari, etc.) on devices like smartphones (Android, iOS) and laptops/desktops. All combined, a total of 5-8 billion devices across the globe are compatible with web AR.
What is kept in mind while creating web AR brand experiences for consumers? “No-code platforms for web AR like Vossle have eliminated the need to write code, which used to be a big task earlier. Additionally, Vossle offers a fully hosted web AR creation experience. Hence, website owners and brands who want to create a web AR experience only have to focus on creating interesting content. Vossle helps with that too, with its integrated content library and empanelled service partner to create custom content for Vossle users,” deciphers Mathur.
Needless to say, web AR as technological advancement is more attractive to the youth. Do brands usually use such experiences to target Gen Y, Gen Z and millenials only? Or if such web AR experiences are also created for the higher age groups, how does Vossle bring in traction from such age groups? Mathur concludes, “Every medium such as movies, television, videos or stories has different user groups and demographics preferring different types of content regardless of the medium. Same is with web AR which can create different content types for different interest groups like fun and educational for kids, exciting stuff like face filters and games for 16-30 year olds, and product visualizations and try-ons for 30-60 year olds.”
Gaming
India’s new online gaming rules take effect today, banning money games and creating a regulator
The rules, in force from today, separate e-sports from gambling and impose jail terms and stiff fines on violators
NEW DELHI: India’s online gaming sector woke up this morning to a new reality. The Promotion and Regulation of Online Gaming Rules, 2026, came into force today, May 1st, turning a year of legislative intent into enforceable law. The message from New Delhi is blunt: e-sports and social games are welcome; online money games are not.
The rules operationalise the Promotion and Regulation of Online Gaming (PROG) Act, passed by Parliament in August 2025. Together, they represent the most sweeping regulatory intervention India has made in its booming digital gaming market, one that generated Rs 23,200 crore in 2024 and is projected to grow at a compound annual rate of 11 per cent to reach Rs 31,600 crore by 2027. The stakes, in every sense, could not be higher.
A sector out of control
The urgency behind the legislation is not hard to find. An estimated 45 crore Indians have been affected by online money gaming platforms, with losses exceeding Rs 20,000 crore. Addiction, financial ruin, money laundering, and suicides have all been linked to the sector. Seventy-seven per cent of the market’s revenues came from transaction-based games, a figure that made regulators deeply uneasy.
The government’s response, effective as of today, is categorical. Online money games, whether based on chance, skill, or any mix of the two, are banned outright. So is their advertising, promotion, and facilitation. Banks and payment processors are barred from handling related transactions. Unlawful platforms can be blocked under the Information
Technology Act, 2000.
The penalties are designed to sting. Offering or facilitating online money games can attract up to three years in jail and a fine of up to Rs 1 crore, or both. Repeat offenders face a minimum of three years, extendable to five, with fines between Rs 1 crore and Rs 2 crore. Advertising such games carries up to two years in prison and fines of up to Rs 50 lakh, with repeat violations attracting higher penalties still. Cyber cell officers at state and union territory levels, including at police station, district, and commissionerate levels, are empowered to investigate offences.
The new sheriff in town
At the centre of the new framework sits the Online Gaming Authority of India, a digital-first regulator constituted as an attached office of the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology, headquartered in Delhi. It is chaired by the additional secretary of MeitY and includes joint secretary-level representation from home affairs, finance, information and broadcasting, youth affairs and sports, and law and justice, a deliberately multi-sectoral design built for a complex sector.
The authority’s powers are broad. It will maintain and publish lists of online money games, investigate complaints, issue directions, orders, and codes of practice, hear appeals on user grievances, and coordinate with financial institutions and law enforcement to ensure effective and timely action.
Its decisions on game classification are to be completed within 90 days, a time-bound commitment that industry players have welcomed after years of regulatory ambiguity. Classification can be triggered by the authority acting on its own initiative, by an application from a service provider, or by a notification from the central government. Games will be assessed on objective factors: whether stakes are involved, whether players expect monetary winnings, the revenue model, and whether in-game assets can be monetised outside the game. The outcome is recorded in a determination order specific to the game and provider.
E-sports gets its moment
While the crackdown on money gaming dominates today’s headlines, the rules also carve out a structured path for e-sports and online social games. Registration, required when notified by the central government, applies to all games offered as e-sports and is based on factors including risk to users, scale, financial transactions, and country of origin. A successful application yields a digital certificate of registration with a unique number, valid for up to ten years. Service providers must display registration details, designate a point of contact, comply with data retention requirements, and follow directions on facilitating payments.
Online money games are explicitly ineligible for recognition or registration as e-sports under the National Sports Governance Act, 2025. The separation is deliberate, and the industry has noticed.
Akshat Rathee, co-founder and managing director of NODWIN Gaming, called today’s operationalisation “encouraging,” pointing to publisher-led registration of esports titles and a time-bound determination process as creating “much-needed certainty for all stakeholders.” He added that the “continued emphasis on clearly separating esports from online money gaming is critical in preserving the integrity of competitive gaming as a skill-driven discipline.” He described it as “a proud moment to see official acknowledgement of the broader benefits of responsible esports and gaming, from building confidence, discipline, and teamwork to creating new career pathways for young talent,” and said the framework sets “a strong foundation for the ecosystem to scale in a more structured and globally competitive manner.”
Animesh Agarwal, co-founder and chief executive of S8UL, was equally bullish. “This clarity is critical in unlocking investor confidence and attracting multi-genre brands, while also enabling organisations to take a more long-term view, whether in investing in talent, scaling teams, or building globally competitive formats,” he said, adding that it “strengthens trust among audiences and mainstream stakeholders, positioning esports not just as a sport, but as a fast-growing youth entertainment category in India.”
But Agarwal urged caution on several fronts. There remains limited clarity around financial frameworks, particularly in how esports earnings are treated by banks and financial institutions. A well-defined pathway for the formal recognition or registration of esports teams is still evolving, as are structured player protections. He also called for smoother visa processes for esports athletes competing in international tournaments and for government support in developing infrastructure, including bootcamps, training facilities, and access to high-performance equipment across titles.
Vishal Parekh, chief operating officer of CyberPowerPC India, pointed to downstream effects on education and careers. “With formal recognition and policy backing, colleges and institutions are more likely to take the sector seriously, whether through dedicated esports infrastructure, training programmes, or curriculum integration,” he said, adding that this helps students view gaming as a viable career spanning roles across competitive play, content, game development, and allied industries. He noted that as esports gains prominence in global multi-sport events, the framework strengthens India’s position in international competitive gaming, and called on the ecosystem to provide the right infrastructure and access to high-performance hardware to unlock opportunities in talent development and job creation.
Protecting users, one safeguard at a time
The rules introduce a layered system of user protections calibrated to the risk profile of each game. These include age verification, age gating, time restrictions, parental controls, user reporting tools, counselling support, and fair-play and integrity monitoring. Service providers must disclose their safety features and internal grievance mechanisms when applying for determination or registration.
A two-tier grievance redressal system sits atop these safeguards. Users who are dissatisfied with a platform’s resolution can escalate to the authority within 30 days. The authority aims to dispose of such appeals within a further 30 days. A second appeal lies before the secretary of MeitY, who must also endeavour to resolve matters within 30 days. Enforcement proceedings will be conducted in digital mode wherever possible, with cases targeted for resolution within 90 days from receipt of a complaint.
Penalties under the framework are proportionate, taking into account gain from non-compliance, loss to users, the gravity of the offence, and whether violations are recurring. Mitigation efforts by service providers will also be considered when determining penalties. All penalties imposed under the Act will be credited to the Consolidated Fund of India.
The money follows the rules
For investors and founders, the implications are immediate and significant. Sagar Nair, head of incubation at LVL Zero Incubator, a 100-day sprint designed to accelerate early-stage gaming startups across India, argues that with real-money gaming now prohibited, capital will shift “away from transaction-driven models toward content-led, IP-driven, and global-first gaming businesses.” He acknowledged trade-offs: for operators with exposure to real-money formats, the market becomes more restrictive in the near term. But he argued that by clearly separating esports and non-money gaming from online money gaming, “India is positioning itself as a hub for responsible, creative, and scalable game development.” The opportunity, he said, is “to view India not just as a monetisation-first market, but as a talent, IP, and scale market,” adding that “for founders and investors willing to adapt, this shift could ultimately strengthen India’s position in the global gaming landscape.”
The government frames the wider impact in equally ambitious terms: a boost to India’s creative economy and digital exports, new career pathways for young people, protection for families from predatory platforms, and a stronger voice in global digital governance. India, it argues, offers a model for other countries grappling with the same tensions between gaming’s economic promise and its social risks, one that shows innovation and strong safeguards need not be mutually exclusive.
Whether the framework delivers on those promises will depend on enforcement, always the hardest part. But from today, the architecture is firmly in place: a regulator with teeth, a classification system with deadlines, penalties designed to deter, and a clear dividing line between games that build careers and games that destroy finances. For a sector that has grown fast and governed itself loosely, May 1st, 2026 is the day the free ride ends.
