AI smart mirrors to cyber games: Tech innovations previewed at IMC 2026

India Mobile Congress 2026 featured an offline AI smart mirror, Vodafone Idea's digital readiness assessment for MSMEs, and Fortinet's interactive cyber defence games

At India Mobile Congress (IMC) 2026, technology was not limited to product displays and presentations. Visitors could stand in front of an AI-powered mirror for styling suggestions, watch an AI avatar assess a business's digital readiness and take part in simulated cyberattacks to understand how organisations can possibly defend their systems.

 

The demonstrations offered a glimpse into how technology is being applied to everyday consumer experiences, small-business digitisation and enterprise security. While one showcased how AI can run entirely on a device without an internet connection, another focused on helping micro, small and medium enterprises (MSMEs) understand their digital gaps. Cybersecurity company Fortinet, meanwhile, turned cyber defence into an interactive game in which visitors could experience the roles of attackers and defenders.

 

 

Vi uses an AI avatar to assess digital readiness

 

While the smart mirror demonstrated how AI could change a consumer experience, Vodafone Idea (Vi) showcased a tool aimed at a different audience: small businesses trying to understand their digital capabilities.

 

Its Ready for Next assessment uses an AI-enabled avatar to guide business owners through questions about their operations. The assessment evaluates a company's digital maturity against a set of parameters and provides a score and report identifying areas where it may need to improve.

 

At IMC 2026, Vodafone Idea set up a large vertical screen featuring an AI-powered avatar, with a microphone placed in front to allow visitors to interact with it. The avatar guided participants through a series of questions about their businesses as part of the company's Ready for Next assessment.

 

Based on their responses, the tool evaluated their digital maturity, identified areas where they were falling behind and generated a report with recommendations to improve their digital capabilities.

 

The tool also allows Vi to suggest relevant solutions based on the assessment results, including workplace collaboration and connectivity services. For example, a business may discover that its employees rely on disconnected tools for email and workplace collaboration. Based on the assessment, Vi can recommend solutions intended to address those gaps.

 

The demonstration is designed to make digital assessment more accessible to business owners who may not have dedicated technology teams or a clear understanding of how their operations compare with market practices.

 

The company said more than 2.5 lakh MSMEs had taken the assessment so far. It also clarified that the short questionnaire displayed at the exhibition was only a simplified version; the full assessment includes a more extensive set of questions.

 

Vi said Ready for Next is its own intellectual property and is intended to help businesses identify where they stand digitally and what steps they can take to improve. 

 

Smart mirror that works without the internet

 

One of the more unusual demonstrations at IMC 2026 was an AI-powered smart mirror built around the Ventuno Q platform, which is available for preorder.

 

The demonstration allowed a person to stand in front of a screen, which used a vision-language model to describe what they were wearing and suggest ways to improve their style. The concept could be used in retail stores, including clothing outlets, to offer shoppers recommendations and help them explore different styling options.

 

However, the more significant part of the demonstration was not the mirror itself but the technology running behind it.

 

According to Shivay, a representative demonstrating the product, the Ventuno Q uses Qualcomm's Dragonwing IQ-8275+ chip, alongside 16GB RAM and 64GB storage. The platform can run a seven-billion-parameter vision-language model locally, without requiring an internet connection for the AI processing demonstrated.

 

This approach, known as edge AI, allows compatible AI workloads to run on the device rather than depending entirely on cloud-based services.

 

The representative said this could be useful across industries such as manufacturing, education and healthcare, where organisations may want to run AI applications locally. It could also help businesses avoid recurring cloud or AI subscription costs for workloads that can be handled on the device.

 

The platform can also run multilingual AI models, including models from Indian AI company Sarvam, according to the representative.

 

The smart mirror is therefore only one application of a broader platform intended to support different AI uses. The device is priced at around $300, or approximately ₹30,000, according to the representative. 

 

Fortinet turns cybersecurity into a hands-on game

 

From assessing digital readiness, the focus shifts to another challenge facing businesses as they become more connected: protecting their systems from cyberattacks. At IMC 2026, Fortinet made cybersecurity more interactive through its Digital Defense Games, where visitors could take part in simulated cyberattack and defence exercises.

 

The company's showcase was divided into two experiences. One focused on its cybersecurity products and hardware, while the other allowed participants to experience how attackers and defenders operate in a simulated environment.

 

Visitors could explore exercises involving zero-trust security and security operations centres (SOCs), gaining a closer look at how cyber defence works rather than simply viewing security products on display.

 

Fortinet was also running three batches of the activity each day. Participants were assigned tasks and scored according to their performance, with awards for those who achieved high rankings.

 

The interactive format helped connect these ideas with practical exercises, giving visitors an opportunity to understand how security decisions play out when a system is under attack.

 

From demonstrations to practical applications

 

The three showcases approached technology from different directions. The AI mirror demonstrated how computing can move onto devices and operate without constant internet access. Vi's assessment tool focused on helping MSMEs identify gaps in their digital maturity, while Fortinet's games showed how organisations can prepare for cyber threats through simulated exercises.

 

Together, they highlighted a wider theme at IMC 2026: the value of technology lies not only in its specifications but also in how people and businesses can use it.