iWorld
Media Executives Rahul Sood and Rohit Jaiswal launch Brandwith in India
Mumbai: Rahul Sood, who was the former MD of BBC India & South Asia, and Rohit Jaiswal, who held the designation of ex VP & head at NDTV Distribution have launched Brandwith in India, covering India and the South Asian region.
Brandwith is the representative and distributor of OTT streaming services like Hallmark Movies Now, Curiosity Stream, PBS Kids, Viaplay, and several other highly differentiated brands, including soon to launch Good Times SVOD. Since Brandwith’s inception in the Asia Pacific Region in 2017, the driving force has been to provide the world’s leading brands across genres like movies, general entertainment, factual entertainment, kids, food, lifestyle and sports in the evolving OTT landscape.
“With paid video subscriptions having reached 99 million in 2022, across almost 45 million households in India, the success of which will require establishing a durable subscriber relationship, our vision is to aid OTT aggregators and their viewers with a diversified offering of the world’s leading streaming services to help increase ARPU and reduce churn,” said Brandwith India founder & MD Rahul Sood.
“The thoughtfully curated portfolio of brands will help OTT aggregators segment their audience, and super serve the English audience base in India, which has increased from 19m pre-pandemic to 42.7m now as per the latest report by Ormax Media,” he added.
iWorld
WhatsApp may soon let users to pick who sees their status updates
The messaging giant is borrowing a page from Instagram’s playbook as it pushes to give users finer control over their social circles.
CALIFORNIA: WhatsApp is quietly working on a feature that could make its Status function considerably smarter and considerably more private.
According to reports from beta tracking platforms, the app is testing a tool called Status lists, which would allow users to create named groups such as close friends, family and colleagues, and control precisely which group sees each update. It is a meaningful step up from the platform’s current blunt instruments, which offer only three options: share with all contacts, exclude specific people, or manually select individuals each time.
The new feature draws an obvious comparison with Instagram’s Close Friends function, and the resemblance is unlikely to be accidental. Both platforms sit within Meta’s family, and the company has been nudging them toward a common logic of audience segmentation for some time.
The move also fits neatly into WhatsApp’s broader privacy push. The platform has been rolling out enhanced chat protections and is exploring the introduction of usernames, which would allow users to connect without exchanging phone numbers. Status lists extend that philosophy from messaging into broadcasting.
Meanwhile, Status itself has been evolving well beyond its origins as a simple photo-and-text slideshow. The feature now supports music stickers, collages, longer videos and interactive elements, pushing it closer to the social-media-style story format pioneered by Snapchat and refined by Instagram. In that context, finer audience controls are not merely a privacy feature. They are a precondition for people sharing more.
The feature remains in development and has not been confirmed for release. WhatsApp routinely tests tools that are later modified or quietly shelved. But the direction of travel is clear: the app wants Status to be a destination, not an afterthought. Letting users decide exactly who is in the audience is how it gets there.
