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Bengaluru International Airport is now on metaverse

The Bangalore International Airport Ltd. (BIAL) which operates the Kempegowda International airport is now in metaverse and newly launched the T2 terminal can be viewed virtually. Called the ‘BLR Metaport’, it offers an immersive, three-dimensional (3D) virtual experience.

Built in collaboration with Amazon Web Services (AWS) and Polygon, the BLR Metaport will offer customers new ways to interact with the airport, like checking into flights, navigating terminals, shopping, and other social aspects like connecting with other travellers.

The BLR Metaport is an outcome of the Joint Innovation Centre (JIC), announced in April by BIAL, AWS, and Intel. The JIC focuses on driving the development and adoption of digital solutions in aviation.

BLR Metaport is built on AWS and uses the Polygon blockchain. It leverages the fundamentals of decentralisation, where control and decision-making are transferred from a centralised entity to a distributed network.

“This is our first foray into the world of Web3 and non-fungible tokens (NFTs), and we aim to delight travellers with a unique, immersive, and virtual experience. We believe that it is important to connect with a new generation of our global audience through the metaverse,” said BIAL’s Chief Strategy and Development Officer, Satyaki Raghunath.

NDML gets RBI nod for payment aggregator service

NSDL Database Management Limited (NDML), a wholly owned subsidiary of National Securities Depository Limited, has received “In Principle Authorisation” from the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) to operate as a Payment Aggregator under the Payment and Settlement Systems Act, 2007.

The Ministry of Electronics & Information Technology, Govt. of India (MeitY) has collaborated with NDML for providing a centralized payment gateway to various government bodies. With the RBI guidelines being issued in March 2020 for regulating the service of online payment collections as a payment aggregator; NDML had submitted its application to the RBI with the requisite details.

Padmaja Chunduru, MD & CEO of National Securities Depository Ltd (NSDL) said, “This is an important milestone for NDML which will facilitate to reach out to government departments and other merchants across length and breadth of India and empower them to go digital with their services and products to all the citizens of the country.”

Reliance is most visible corporate in media: report

Reliance Industries Ltd, India’s largest corporate by revenues, profits, and market value, topped the 2022 Wizikey Newsmakers report as India’s most-visible corporate in the media.

State Bank of India, ICICI Bank Limited, Bharti Airtel Limited, and One 97 Communications Limited, which owns Paytm, are the other firms in the top five rankings, Wizikey said in a statement.

The rankings are based on Wizikey’s News Score which measures news visibility for brands & individuals by analyzing the volume of news, headlines presence, and the reach of publications.

Wizikey’s Artifical Intelligence (AI) and Machine Learning (ML) technology gathers media intelligence from over 50 million news articles across over 400,000 online publications. The report considered over 1000 Indian corporates for analysis.

For its No.1 position Reliance has a news score of 92.56 for 2022, becoming the first Indian company ever to cross the threshold of 90. Reliance improved its news score from 84.9 in 2021.