India’s First Phygital Service Hub Launched in MP

Union Communications Minister Jyotiraditya Scindia has inaugurated India’s first integrated phygital service centre in Umri village, Guna district, Madhya Pradesh, under the Department of Telecommunications’ Samriddh Gram Phygital Services Pilot Initiative. The centre combines physical and digital access to healthcare, education, agriculture, banking, and government services, marking a major step toward rural digital empowerment.

Key Highlights of the Launch

• Location: Umri village, Guna district, Madhya Pradesh
• Date of Launch: March 15, 2026
• Launched By: Union Communications Minister Jyotiraditya Scindia
• Initiative: Samriddh Gram Phygital Services Pilot by the Department of Telecommunications
• Objective: To provide integrated access to essential services (healthcare, education, agriculture, banking, and government schemes) through a hybrid physical-digital model.

What “Phygital” Means Here

• Physical + Digital Integration: Villagers can walk into the centre for in-person assistance while simultaneously accessing online platforms.
• Service Coverage:
  • Healthcare: Telemedicine consultations, health awareness programs
  • Education: Digital learning modules, skill development courses
  • Agriculture: Online crop advisory, market price updates
  • Banking: Digital financial services, UPI-based transactions
  • Government Services: Access to schemes, certificates, and grievance redressal

Strategic Importance

• Digital Empowerment: Bridges the digital divide in rural India by offering both offline and online access.
• Holistic Development: Encourages rural communities to adopt digital tools while ensuring inclusivity for those less tech-savvy.
• Pilot Model: If successful, the initiative could be scaled across other districts and states, transforming rural service delivery nationwide.

Comparison: Traditional vs. Phygital Centres

Feature	Traditional Rural Centres	Phygital Service Centre
Service Access	Mostly physical, limited digital	Hybrid (physical + digital)
Healthcare	Local clinics only	Telemedicine + local support
Education	Schools, limited resources	Digital learning + skill hubs
Agriculture Support	Offline advisory	Real-time digital updates
Banking	Manual transactions	Digital payments, UPI, online banking
Government Services	Paper-based, slow	Online portals + assisted access

Challenges & Risks

• Digital Literacy Gap: Villagers may need training to fully benefit.
• Connectivity Issues: Reliable internet access is crucial for success.
• Scalability: Pilot success in Guna will determine feasibility for nationwide rollout.

This launch positions Guna as a testbed for rural digital transformation, with Scindia emphasizing that the initiative will “bring the world to Umri” by placing opportunities directly in villagers’ hands.

Deloitte Opens First Phygital Innovation Center in Bangalore

The largest professional services network, Deloitte, has recently inaugurated a groundbreaking 'phygital' innovation centre in Bengaluru. This innovative center, known as the Deloitte Centre of Innovation and Technology (DCIT), is a fusion of the physical and digital realms, offering domain-specific solutions to help businesses reduce costs and increase efficiency.

The DCIT aims to assist customers in finding new and sustainable ways to grow their businesses while fostering a culture of innovation. It serves as a hub for exploring cutting-edge technologies and envisioning novel business models.

The centre spans across an impressive 12,500 square feet and comprises five distinct zones:

• Retail: Focused on reimagining customer interfaces and experiences within the retail sector.
• Manufacturing: A space for creating diverse prototypes related to supply chains and product development.
• Digital Studio: Where innovative ideas come to life through technology, including 5G connectivity and AI.
• Immersive: Utilizing mixed reality, immersive reality, and augmented reality to provide hands-on, real-time experiences.
• Advanced Connectivity: Bridging visionary concepts with the delivery of high-quality products and services.

Deloitte emphasizes the importance of collaboration. The big-four company aims to bring together the entire ecosystem, including clients and alliance partners, on a co-creation journey. This collective effort ensures that diverse perspectives contribute to the success of the centre.

DCIT boasts over 60 use cases across various sectors, including retail, manufacturing, and healthcare. These use cases will be refreshed every 90 days, ensuring relevance and adaptability.

Through mixed reality and other technologies, DCIT provides hands-on experiences, allowing businesses to test scenarios before deployment. Understanding expected results is crucial for novel business ideas.

Deloitte collaborates with academia, including institutions like IIT Delhi and IIT Madras, to stimulate innovation and drive meaningful change.

Businesses can actively engage with Deloitte's DCIT to explore innovative solutions, reimagine customer experiences, and leverage cutting-edge technology for growth and efficiency. Moreover, the DCIT can act as an accelerator for startups, providing them with the tools, expertise, and ecosystem to turn their innovative ideas into viable, market-ready solutions.

Startups often have innovative ideas but may lack the resources to access advanced technologies. The DCIT provides access to technologies like 5G connectivity and Al, which can help startups bridge visionary ideas with the delivery of high- quality products and services. The DCIT can offer prototyping & product development for startups with facilities to create diverse prototypes, allowing startups to develop and test their products in a supportive environment. This can significantly reduce the time and cost associated with product development.

In essence, the Deloitte 'phygital' innovation centre represents a powerful convergence of physical and digital realms, where visionary ideas meet practical execution, ultimately benefiting both businesses and startups across industries.

Jumbish Introduces PHYGITAL ART in the NFT World for Better Value Creation Onboards Galleries & Curators for Endorsements

Onboards Galleries & Curators for endorsements

Jumbish, the technology-enabled art platform which leverages Blockchain to maximize returns to the stakeholders in the art world, has roped in galleries and curators. The curators & galleries build in credibility into NFT-enabled online and offline sale and purchases of artwork will also be issued unique digital tokens for transparency and value creation in the system.

This will enable art collectors to collect non-fungible tokens (NFTs) along with the physical art, thus creating a Phygital platform in reality. The NFT provides a digital certificate, proof of ownership and a detailed provenance while the art collector owns the physical art too.

The e-commerce platform dedicated to artwork has onboarded galleries like Arts of the Earth, Art Lounge, Ruki Art Gallery, and Drishya Foundation. The art galleries has helped Jumbish to focus on the entire spectrum of art from contemporary and traditional art forms. Showcasing the artworks on the NFT-enabled platform of Jumbish helps create history for both Phygital and digital art forms whereas selling on the platform help create outreach to the much-needed client base and appreciators of art. Digital token applied to all artwork help leverage the advantages of NFTs.

Bibhas Banerjee, Chief Value Officer (Director) of Jumbish Creations said, “It has been our aim to position artwork with proper value propositions to buyers and collectors so that the stakeholders can maximize returns in the art world. It is important to exchange artworks with NFT attached to it, so that the value addition can be compared and distributed to the original creators. That is why we promote Phygital—both physical and digital artforms with NFT enabled transactions.”

“We have enough supply of artwork, what we are looking for is to make the buyers more aware of the technology platform that can help them to buy authentic artform. Association with galleries & curators assures the buyers of the physical presence of the artwork, even if they buy NFTs through online platforms. Galleries & curators also help evaluate the individual artworks that gets listed with us. We have covered the geographical distance with buyers and collectors through Jumbish, but we need to clear the psychological distance of buying artwork with NFTs,” he added.

Rahul Chakraborty, Co-Founder & Creative Director of Jumbish said, “Artworks whose record is maintained over a decentralized platform makes it immutable while preventing them from duplicity and piracy. Change of ownership enables Royalty to creators and the owner obtains the artwork which establishes sole ownership of the authenticated artwork making the artwork priceless in the long run. Very few platforms include physical arts to be NFT enabled, Jumbish aims to go PHYGITAL in a bullish manner.”

Incidentally, Jumbish brought in the tech versatility of Industry 4.0 voluntarily to create value in the art world, while positioning itself as the most versatile social global art exchange platform that can create a difference for investors, curators, customers, and artists in a highly competitive art marketplace.

Jumbish has reigned in Sushma Bahl, an art curator, critic & celebrated art author, Lubna Sen, an art curator, consultant, and independent art researcher along with Sangeeta Gupta, the retired chief commissioner of Income Tax but an artist and filmmaker in her own right to certify, comment, and curate the artwork listed for online sales also.

Diversity of Art under the ambit of Jumbish is not only limited to paintings, sketches, or installations but also has variable pillars like Graffiti, doodles, cartoons, and Physical + Digital = Phygital arts under its banner. Jumbish helps modern-day customers build up their digilockers consisting of Phygital artworks that uses blockchain technology to bridge the digital world and the physical world with the purpose of creating unique interactive experiences for the viewer and the owner.

Shankar Mridha, Chief Believer & Co-founder Jumbish added, “We intend to create value for the art owners and appreciators by bringing in benefits of technology along with several advantages for galleries & curators thereby enhancing the art eco-system. Technology-led innovations like NFTs attract both offline & online customers building a conducive environment for all the art world. Jumbish will surely realize the dream of every stakeholder in the art community to attain profitability through technology.”

Digital Startup Pitch Night, World's First Ever Phygital Start-up Funding Event by Engage AI. Digital, Grabs 3 Million Eyeballs Globally

Digital Startup Pitch Night, world's first ever phygital start-up funding event by Engage AI. Digital, grabs 3 million eyeballs alongside 120 physical presence in the capacity of 100, on 21^st July'22, Thursday at The Oberoi, Gurugram.

Investor Panel at the Event

The event was hosted locally and globally with the objective to create a safe and engaging space for local early-stage digital startups to connect with serial entrepreneurs, AI mentors, VCs and investors, to become more accustomed with the digital startup ecosystem. With the added aim of promoting a digital startup culture, DSPN presented a platform for founders to absorb ideas and advice, and expand their expertise and experience in the company of fellow entrepreneurs, to gain rapid access to resources and opportunities so that their funding and other needs are satisfactorily met.

The event witnessed 8 digital local startups from the ecosystem which are Onefede, Paykio, BDB, Waterdrop, Boomlet, Nawgali, Gokhana, Explurger who presented in front of a panel of investors like Ms. Geeta Goel - Michael & Susan Dell Foundation, Mr. Girish Shivani - Executive Director and Fund Manager, Mr. Anshul Kumar - Head of Analytics, Wingyfy, Mr. Vikas Nahar - Founder & CEO, Happilo, Mr. Sarthak Bakshi - Chief Executive Officer, Rissa IVF, Mr. Ashish Bhatia - Founder & CEO, India Accelerator, Mr. Abhishek Garg - CEO, Dulhania.com, Mr. Gaurav Goel - Group President National Head - Startup/Fintech & New Economy Business, Yes Bank. The room also witnessed industry experts like Amit Khanna, Partner, PWC, Mr. Sanjay Sharma, MD, Accenture.

Mr. Shailendra Kumar, Thought leader and International authority on Artificial Intelligence and Data Analytics, commented during the event, "I am thrilled to witness the enthusiasm and exuberance of the new age digital startups and the way they have showcased their potential to get global recognition. The platform has helped them to connect with some of the great minds in the business and with that rich experience, the young entrepreneurs will surely find some wise words of wisdom which will help them grow in professional and personal upliftment. We are glad to offer the startup ecosystem a global platform and provide the 5 pillars of the ecosystem i.e Funding, Brand Recognition, Global Visibility, Mentorship and Networking. I would also like to announce our next edition after seeing such great response at our maiden edition which is most likely to happen within 6 to 8 weeks."

Ashish Bhatia, Founder, CEO India Accelerator also announced to fund two startups Gokhana and Explurger from a crowd of 8 participants. Explurger is also Co-founded by Sonu Sood.

Mr. Amit Khanna, Partner PWC - "India is the third biggest startup ecosystem in India and I can sense we are going to become the 1st largest very soon. We have enough funds in the country and we are missing right mentorship, right scalability and right guidance and events like DSPN is certainly going to help the startup ecosystem to grow and develop beautifully."

The Digital Startup Pitch Night was launched with a registration process following which experts of all levels came together to share their thoughts and suggestions. Addressing the enthusiastic entrepreneurs behind the startups, many among the industry thought leaders in attendance shared the challenges of growing their business locally and globally. Post the speeches and interactions, there was a Q&A round in which startup founders got the chance to pick the brains of the established entrepreneurs. The audience also participated by directing queries at startup founders.

About DSPN

DSPN, the worlds first ever phygital startup funding event, and the incubator arm of Engage AI. Digital, aims to create a space where local startups are able to connect with the broader startup ecosystem, and can access resources as and when required. This programme provides a platform to unite experts from the various industries promoting local digital startups, to today's startup culture. Such a platform helps new-age digital startups get exposure to the wider ecosystem, including incubators, mentors, policymakers, technical experts, investors, VCs, and fellow startup Founders. 

Sportzchain’s Exclusive Phygital NFT of Tamil Thalaivas Sold Within 24 Hours of Listing

Praveen Ramasamy is now the proud owner of this unique masterpiece

This one-of-its-kind memorabilia consists of the matchday jersey signed by Surjeet Singh, a plaque commemorating his 300 tackle points, the first in the history of PKL

Stirring up the existing Non-Fungible Tokens (NFT) space in India, Sportzchain, a fast-growing market-leader in India’s blockchain-based fan-engagement ecosystem, has achieved another milestone. Sportzchain’s exclusive phygital NFT of Tamil Thalaivas, a Pro Kabaddi team’s captain Surjeet Singh was sold within 24 hours of listing. Praveen Ramasamy, an avid fan of Tamil Thalaivas digital collectables, is now the proud owner of this unparalleled memorabilia.

The memorabilia consist of the matchday jersey signed by Surjeet Singh, in a plaque commemorating his achievement to become the first cover defender in the history of Kabaddi League to score 300 tackle points. It also has a QR code representing the smart code that can be used to access the validation of NFT ownership details.

It is pertinent to note that Praveen bought this classic memorabilia to complete his treasured collection of Tamil Thalaivas NFT collectables. Before making this purchase, he had 26 distinctive collectables. With this recent addition, Praveen is now the top collector of Tamil Thalaivas remarkable NFTs.

Earlier this month, this phygital memorabilia was hand-delivered to Praveen in Chennai by the Chief Business Officer (CBO) of Sportzchain, Vinayak Yannam. Praveen also received the digital twin of this phygital memorabilia, which comes with certain premium fan privileges, including match day tickets, lucky draws, and other exciting perks.

Vinayak Yannam, Co-Founder and CBO, Sportzchain, said, “Being the first to launch a phygital memorabilia in the sports segment, we had to make it memorable. So, we decided to give this moment a personal touch and personally deliver this to the buyer. Meeting Praveen was a great experience. We had so much to talk about as we are both NFT and sports fans. He shared his views on NFT collections and expectations from the Tamil Thalaivas team during the upcoming season. As we gear up to launch the NFT collections of more sports partners, we are becoming increasingly curious and excited about connecting with like-minded fans and enthusiasts.”

Praveen Ramasamy, the proud owner of the exclusive phygital NFT, said, “I had no clue that this was the first time in India that a phygital sports NFT was launched. My goal was to become the top collector of Tamil Thalaiva NFTs. So, it made no sense to lose this incredible opportunity to buy an exclusive phygital NFT. Words aren’t enough to express my joy. I have already made space in my living room to put this up. I am thankful to the Sportchain team for explaining the utilities for this NFT. I am graciously looking forward to meeting the extended team, attending training sessions and getting first access to the Tamil Thalaivas fan tokens in the future.”

Recently, Sportzchain has secured USD 600k in the seed funding round led by SUNiCON Ventures and MAKS Group. Through this latest funding, Sportzchain plans to boost its web development growth and harness the power of advanced marketing techniques to onboard more Web 2.0 users.

About Sportzchain

SportZchain, India's blockchain-based fan engagement platform connects sports teams and fans through a single thread, which will not only result in radical fan engagement but also lay the foundation of creating a massive invested fan base. The platform aims to revamp fan engagement through a belief that sports fans deserve a basic right to be heard by their favourite sporting teams and also be able to guide and influence some key decisions of their favourite team.

Mental Wellness Startup LISSUN Targets Phygital Presence in Over 25 Cities in 2022

Lissun, an end-to-end solution in mental and emotional health, has announced to mark its Phygital presence over 25 cities in country by end of this year. Currenty Lissun has it’s mental and emotional health centers in Delhi, Gurgaon, Ghaziabad, Noida, Muzaffarnagar (UP), Lucknow and Pune.

 

LISSUN Team at Centre in Muzzafarnagar

In the Phase-I Lissun will cover Jaipur, Agra, Hapur, Banglore and Hyderabad and subsequent in the Phase-II the company promises to set up in Mumbai, Vizag, Chandigarh etc. The Tire-I will constitute 70% of the target cities and Tire-II will capture rest 30%.

“With the envision to empower robust mental and emotional health, We are going to make our base strong in 25 cities of India by the end of this fiscal year. Based on our survey we have received numerous responses and have identified the prevailing void that exists in our target cities and it’s very important that we deliver quality treatment as per the foreign standards in India”, said Mr. Krishna Veer Singh- Co-founder & Director LISSUN.

In the 25 target cities, Lissun aims to incorporate and build 75+IVF centers and partnering with 25+ hospitals. The platform has targets of helping over 20000 people in these 25 cities within 2022.

Mr. Tarun Gupta, Co-founder, LISSUN affirmed, “We at Lissun have been time in and time again drawing attention to the serious subject of mental and emotional well-being. Being emotionally healthy will promote productivity and effectiveness in activities at work, school, and workspace. It plays an important part in the health of your relationships and allows you to adapt to changes in your life.”

The core team of the Lissun comprises of alumni from IIT, IIM, ISB and NIMHANS. The platform has already reached over 6000 users and have been addressing the issue with its cutting edge tech and phygital approach.

About LISSUN

Launched on 15th August 2021, Headquartered in Gurugram, LISSUN is an organization that has been established to address the rising challenge of mental illness in the society. LISSUN has been founded by two industry veterans Krishna Veer Singh and Tarun Gupta to provide individuals with the right guidance, therapies, and solutions for their emotional and mental wellbeing in a world full of conflicts. The platform provides end to end care for mental health by offering self-diagnosis through tech tools, and then provides the necessary treatment to the