iWorld
Hulu Japan says hello to Indian content
MUMBAI: The world has been amazed with Japan's anime and now it's time for role reversal. While international over the top (OTT) giants like Netflix and Amazon are already playing an active game in India, Hulu Japan has also arrived in search of content.
A fireside chat with Hulu Japan CCO Kazufumi Nagasawa was conducted at Vidnet 2018 hosted by Indiantelevision.com powered by Verizon which had ZEE5 as title partner. The session was moderated by Indiantelevision.com founder and CEO Anil Wanvari.
Nagasawa said that the Japanese market is crowded with OTT platforms, majority focusing on SVOD service and a few on AVOD model. He claimed Hulu Japan stands with 1.8 million paying subscribers with more than 50,000 hours of content. Talking about the company making room for Indian content in the Japanese market, Nagasawa said that the plan is to offer Swastik Productions' Porus in its content line-up with Japanese subtitles.
He added, “We prefer period drama and are usually not excited for miniseries. Moreover, I got a chance to look at the Porus trailer at Mipcom and I was fascinated by it.” Baahubali was also another option that the company had offered to the Japanese viewers which worked well with them.
Apart from this, Hulu acquired Turkish and Russian shows and its performance did better than their expectations. “The reason for acquiring Indian content is because it is affordable as compared to Turkish content. Because of the given resources that we have, we need to be very choosy. In the next two years, we might acquire Indian shows including Tamil, Telugu and Kannada among others but with subtitles as we cannot afford to dub them.” He also said that in 2019, its plan is to focus on developing original content and to be less dependent on studio content (American).
Hulu Japan was initially launched in the US in 2011. Then it got acquired by Nippon TV in 2014. Nagasawa said that Hulu is a pure SVOD service and that is its primary focus. “We have 50,000 hours of content and out of that, 3000 are films and the rest are series. As far as content from domestic and international markets is concerned, 60 to 65 per cent are from domestic and the rest is from international, which is mostly from US. We actually launched our service with pure US content initially because we couldn’t get local content, especially from broadcasters.”
He further said that now most of the content the company gets is from its parent Nippon TV and the content that it provides is catch-up, exclusive content, drama series, extra footage etc.
When it comes to age diversification, Nagasawa said that initially, men were majority users. Right now it is 50:50 and especially the audience from Nippon TV has a big skew to women. "This happened because we started US drama series. Half of the consumption comes from living room set and majority of the users are watching on mobile that means many users are using multiple devices to watch content. In terms of hours, living room is most important but that doesn’t mean people doesn’t use mobile,” he concluded.
iWorld
X launches XChat messaging app on iOS with calls and encryption
Standalone app marks shift from “everything app” vision, adds E2E messaging.
MUMBAI: From one big app to many small chats, X seems to be splitting its ambitions. X has rolled out its standalone messaging app, XChat, to iOS users, opening up a new front in its evolving product strategy. The app allows users to connect with existing X contacts through private and group messages, file sharing, as well as audio and video calls. The launch follows a limited beta phase, where the platform tested the product with a smaller user base to refine the experience. Now available publicly, XChat marks a notable pivot from earlier ambitions championed by Elon Musk to turn X into a single “everything app” combining messaging, payments, commerce and more.
Instead, the company under xAI ownership and backed by SpaceX appears to be building a suite of standalone applications, each targeting specific use cases while expanding its broader ecosystem.
At launch, XChat includes end-to-end encrypted messaging, PIN-based access, disappearing messages, and features such as message editing, deletion for all participants, and screenshot blocking. The company has also said the app is free from advertisements and tracking mechanisms, positioning it as a privacy-first alternative in a crowded messaging space.
However, security claims around the platform are likely to face scrutiny. Earlier iterations of XChat drew criticism from experts who argued it fell short of established encrypted platforms like Signal. With the wider rollout, the app is expected to undergo fresh evaluation to assess whether those concerns have been addressed.
Beyond messaging, XChat will also house X’s Communities feature, which is being discontinued on the main platform due to low usage and spam concerns. Migrating these users could provide an early boost to adoption, effectively turning XChat into both a communication and community hub.
The move underscores a broader recalibration at X less about cramming everything into one app, and more about spreading bets across multiple touchpoints, one message at a time.
