iWorld
Crunchyroll onboards Rashmika Mandanna to celebrate anime across India
Mumbai: Crunchyroll, the world’s ultimate home for anime, has announced that actress Rashmika Mandanna is partnering with Crunchyroll to celebrate her love of anime across India.
Mandanna will join forces with Crunchyroll at various events and activations, helping share her enthusiasm and introduce more fans across India to the breadth and depth of what they can experience on Crunchyroll. Her well-known love for anime includes titles across romance, action and fantasy as well as iconic franchises like Naruto, Cardcaptor Sakura and Bleach.
“Rashmika Mandanna’s passion for anime is contagious, energizing, and impossible to ignore,” said Crunchyroll president Rahul Purini. “We are excited to partner with her and invite millions in India to dive into the fantastical worlds, rich stories and complex characters that are beloved by her and millions around the globe as we build the ultimate home for anime in India together.”
“As an avid anime fan, I am thrilled to join hands with Crunchyroll and become a part of their family. It is an incredible brand that is committed to promoting anime globally,” said Mandanna. “Anime transcends the boundaries of culture, uniting everyone through the power of stories, and I cannot wait for more and more people to experience and embark on this journey with Crunchyroll as they bring the best titles in multiple Indic languages. I am excited to meet and engage with my fellow fans and explore the infinite worlds of Anime together!”
Debuting in 2016, Mandanna is a versatile and award-winning actor, known for her acting prowess in Kannada, Telugu, Hindi & Tamil Cinema. She enjoys a huge fanbase across the nation and was declared as the ‘National Crush of India’ by Google in 2020. Apart from her stunning skills as an actor and dancer, Indian fans adore her happy-go-lucky nature and style statement.
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.
