iWorld
Hooq adds Prestige, Zodiac & Village to its offering
MUMBAI: The 89 Annual Oscar awards are scheduled to happen later this month on the 24 February. As we gear to watch the awards where films with excellent content are nominated every year, Hooq has added new movie titles to its existing content base. The new titles include renowned names such as The Prestige, Dirty Pretty Things, There will be Blood, Zodiac, Inside Jobs, The Village, The English Patient amongst others.
Hooq India MD Salil Kapoor said, “Oscars being the most prestigious awards in the history of the film industry automatically becomes a benchmark for the best curated content of all time. As a platform which offers video on demand service, we want to give our customers the best and the most exciting content from across the world and genres. We are very happy to announce the addition of new Oscar titles to our existing base. Hooq has one of the largest number of titles and we are very excited to continuously add more content every month. With varied content on our platform, we aim to offer our audiences different flavors with an uninterrupted viewing experience. To propagate our efforts further, we have multiple partnerships in place, to give a few examples, the Hooq complimentary trials are available for postpaid customers of Airtel, Vodafone and ACT Fiber net. These partnerships will help consumer experience the freedom of viewing content anytime, anywhere with Hooq and give them a window to what we have to offer.”
The Prestige- is a mystery thriller drama film directed by Christopher Nolan, from a screenplay adapted by Nolan and his brother Jonathan from Christopher Priest’s 1995 World Fantasy Award-winning novel of the same name. The story follows Robert Angier and Alfred Borden, rival stage magicians in London at the end of the 19th century. Obsessed with creating the best stage illusion, they engage in competitive one-upmanship with tragic results.The film had 34 nominations and five wins in the Academy Awards.
Dirty Pretty Things- is a British drama film directed by Stephen Frears and written by Steven Knight, a drama about two immigrants in London. The film had 19 nominations and 5 wins in the Academy Awards 2004.
There Will Be Blood- is a American epic historical drama film written and directed by Paul Thomas Anderson and starring Daniel Day-Lewis and Paul Dano. The film was inspired by Upton Sinclair’s novel Oil! It tells the story of a silver miner-turned-oilman (Day-Lewis) on a ruthless quest for wealth during Southern California’s oil boom of the late 19th and early 20th centuries. The film had around 80 nominations with 70 wins out of them.
Zodiac- is an American mystery-thriller film directed by David Fincher. Zodiac tells the story of the manhunt for a notorious serial killer who called himself the “Zodiac” and killed in and around the San Francisco Bay Area during the late 1960s and early 1970s, leaving several victims in his wake and taunting police with letters, blood stained clothing, and ciphers mailed to newspapers. The cases remain one of Northern California’s most infamous unsolved crimes. The film had 30 nominations with 10 wins out of them.
Inside Job- is a documentary film, directed by Charles H. Ferguson, about the late-2000s financial crisis. The film is about “the systemic corruption of the United States by the financial services industry and the consequences of that systemic corruption”. In five parts, the film explores how changes in the policy environment and banking practices helped create the financial crisis.Inside Job was acclaimed by film critics, who praised its pacing, research, and exposition of complex material. The film was screened at the 2010 Cannes Film Festival in May and won the 2010 Academy Award for Best Documentary Feature.
The Village- is an American psychological thriller film, written, produced, and directed by M. Night Shyamalan, and starring Bryce Dallas Howard, Joaquin Phoenix, Adrien Brody, William Hurt, and Sigourney Weaver. The film is about a village whose inhabitants live in fear of creatures inhabiting the woods beyond it. Like other films written and directed by Shyamalan from the same time period, The Village has a twist ending.The film received mixed reviews, with critics especially divided about the plausibility and payoff of the ending. The film gave composer James Newton Howard his fourth Academy Award nomination for Best Original Score. The film had 11 nominations with 5 wins out of them.
The English Patient is a British-American romantic drama film directed by Anthony Minghella from his own script based on the novel of the same name by Michael Ondaatje and produced by Saul Zaentz. In the final days of the Italian Campaign of World War II, Hana, a French-Canadian nurse working and living in a bombed-out Italian monastery, looks after a critically burned man who speaks English but cannot remember his name. They are joined by Kip, a Sikhsapper in the British Army who defuses bombs and has a love affair with Hana before leaving. The film was released to critical acclaim, and received 12 nominations at the 69th Academy Awards, eventually winning nine, including Best Picture, Best Director for Minghella and Best Supporting Actress for Juliette Binoche.
Gaming
MTG gaming chief Benninghoff joins NODWIN board as esports firm primes for IPO
The Gurugram-based esports firm is pursuing a public listing, has returned to profitability and is growing revenues by 42 per cent
GURUGRAM: NODWIN Gaming is moving fast. The Gurugram-based gaming and esports company has launched a pre-IPO fundraising round, appointed UBS as lead adviser for both the round and a subsequent public listing, and landed a heavyweight board director, all in one go.
The new board member is Arnd Benninghoff, executive vice president of gaming at Stockholm-listed Modern Times Group (MTG), who has overseen the group’s strategic investments and portfolio growth since 2014. He is no stranger to building things: Benninghoff has founded and built fifteen companies, served as chief digital officer at ProSiebenSat.1 Media AG, managing director of SevenVentures, and chief executive of Holtzbrinck eLAB. He began his career as a journalist at Deutsche Presse Agentur and various TV networks, holds a Diplom-Kaufmann in business and administration from the University of Münster, and previously sat on the board of Edgeware AB.
The numbers back the ambition
NODWIN is not pitching a story without substance. The company has returned to EBITDA profitability and posted a 42 per cent year-on-year revenue surge, reaching $58.5m in the first nine months of FY2026. The pre-IPO round will combine a primary issuance to fund global expansion through organic growth and acquisitions, alongside a secondary sale to give existing shareholders some liquidity.
Akshat Rathee, co-founder and managing director of NODWIN Gaming, said Benninghoff understands “the entire lifecycle of the gaming and media ecosystem, from the boots-on-the-ground reality of building startups to the strategic complexity of managing multi-billion dollar global portfolios.”
Benninghoff, for his part, said the company “sits at the intersection of sports, entertainment, and technology, making it one of the most exciting players in the global gaming landscape today.”
A portfolio built for the global south
Founded in 2014 by Rathee and Gautam Virk, NODWIN has quietly assembled one of the more compelling esports portfolios outside the Western hemisphere. Its properties include DreamHack India and Comic Con India, and it recently acquired StarLadder, the Ukraine-based tournament organiser behind premier events in CS:GO and Dota 2. The company also serves as a long-term strategic marketing partner for the Evolution Championship Series (EVO), the world’s most prominent fighting game tournament, helping push it into new geographies.
Its geographic focus spans South Asia, Central Asia, Southeast Asia, the Middle East and Africa. Backers include Nazara Technologies, KRAFTON, Sony Group Corporation, JetSynthesys, and the founders’ investment vehicle Good Game Investments.
What comes next
With UBS running the books, a board freshly reinforced with European media and gaming expertise, and revenue heading in the right direction, NODWIN is laying the groundwork deliberately. The esports industry has burned investors before with big promises and thin margins. NODWIN’s return to profitability, combined with a real portfolio of owned intellectual properties across gaming, music and youth culture, gives it a more credible runway than most. The IPO clock is now ticking.
