How holograms are used at live events in India, from stage rigs to HoloBox

This page explains how holograms have been used at live events in India. The WAVES summit was not a Metaverse911 project. The HoloBox described is our own product, and the page gives no results from a client event. See our case studies for our own work.

The situation: reaching audiences across a large country

Live events in India are defined by scale. Reaching audiences across many cities has meant flat LED walls and heavy travel schedules for speakers and leaders. Being in several places at once, or making a hall of thousands feel addressed in person, was the hard limit.

What changed: from stage rigs to standalone units

The technology has since moved into corporate and public events. The inaugural WAVES summit, held at the Jio World Convention Centre in Mumbai from 1 to 4 May 2025, reflected India's ambition to be a hub for media, entertainment and immersive technology.

The technical change is just as large. Instead of stage-sized "Pepper's Ghost" rigs, events now use standalone units such as HoloBox: a self-contained enclosure that shows a life-size, photorealistic hologram, with far less setup, a sharper image and two-way interaction.

How it works

The older approach

Those rigs were a scaled-up version of the 19th-century Pepper's Ghost illusion. A projector beamed video onto a hidden reflective surface, which bounced it onto a transparent foil stretched across the stage at 45 degrees. It needed near-total lighting control, heavy trusses and several days of calibration, so it suited only the largest events.

The HoloBox approach

A HoloBox needs no foil or blacked-out hall. It is a sealed enclosure with an 86" 4K display that makes a person appear to stand inside the box. The steps are:

• Record or stream: the subject is recorded once in a studio with professional lighting and a green screen, or streamed live using chroma-key capture.
• Show in the box: the feed plays in the unit as a life-size, photorealistic figure, bright enough to read across a busy venue.
• Interact: visitors tap a touch overlay to trigger recorded answers; an AI avatar can lip-sync responses; and live two-way streaming lets a remote leader see, hear and reply in real time.
• Scale across cities: a keynote recorded in Mumbai can play on HoloBox units in Delhi, Hyderabad and Bengaluru at the same time.

Setup is plug-and-play: standard power, a network connection, and media loaded by USB, SD card or media server.

What it offers each team

These are the benefits to expect from this kind of deployment. They are not figures from a single event.

• Event production: no week-long builds. A HoloBox is wheeled in, plugged in and running far faster than a foil stage, which lowers venue, labour and risk, and makes holograms possible in corporate lobbies and regional banquet halls.
• Corporate communications: a CEO or spokesperson can appear in person, in effect, in several cities in one day without flying, with the same message everywhere.
• Marketing: a life-size hologram draws a crowd and gets photographed and shared. HoloBox can also record which questions visitors tap most, which shows what the audience cares about.

What it means for manufacturers

Manufacturers run dealer meets, product launches, town halls and trade show stands across many cities. A hologram unit lets a managing director or product head appear at each one without travelling, either recorded or live, and lets visitors ask questions through a touch screen.

Because the unit is self-contained and runs on standard power and network, it fits a stand, a plant reception or a regional office as easily as a convention hall. Recording once and playing in several cities keeps the message consistent.

Metaverse911 supplies HoloBox for events. HoloBox rental starts from ₹75,000 a day for the unit only, plus GST. Purchase is by enquiry. See HoloBox rental or talk to our team.