iWorld
Pocket Aces promotes co-founder Aditi Shrivastava to CEO
Mumbai: Digital entertainment company Pocket Aces Monday has announced the elevation of co-founder Aditi Shrivastava to the newly created position of chief executive officer.
Aditi will headline Pocket Aces’ three lines of business – social distribution, which houses FilterCopy, Dice Media and Gobble, a talent manager Clout, and a studio for digital content.
Aditi will lead Pocket Aces in its next phase of growth and continue to be a member of the board of directors of the company. Founders Ashwin Suresh and Anirudh Pandita, will also continue to remain shareholders and board members, running Loco, the game streaming platform incubated at Pocket Aces, which was recently spun off into a separate entity, the company said in a statement.
Speaking on her new role, Aditi shared, “We have built a strong foundation for Pocket Aces, and I am thrilled to grow it to one of the largest new-age media companies globally. Our core moat gives us the competitive advantage – a highly meritocratic culture with a diverse high-performance team; a data-driven approach to content creation that turns the traditional media model around its head and dramatically increases hit rate; and an ecosystem approach that leverages all major opportunities – capturing media real estate, building large IPs, and growing talent into brands. We have clear visibility of our content strategy and revenue leading us to profitability, and some very exciting new initiatives launching later this year as well.”
Ashwin Suresh said, “Over the past few years Pocket Aces has cemented its leadership position within the digital entertainment ecosystem while championing the overall growth of the industry. In addition to building out monetization for the Social Distribution business and overseeing the growth of Clout, Aditi also put together an impressive slate of shows for the Studio business. Under her new mandate as CEO and supported by a capable leadership team with a healthy mix of industry experience, first-principles thinking, and creative innovation, Aditi is all set to write the next chapter in the Pocket Aces growth story. We are in the first innings of the digital media revolution and I am excited to see Aditi and our leadership team take Pocket Aces to new heights.”
Anirudh Pandita said, “Pocket Aces has set the pace for innovation in digital entertainment and we are more confident than ever of delivering on our promise of solving boredom. The Pocket Aces leadership team led by Aditi, has the right mix of industry veterans and new-age digital-first thinkers, to execute on the exponential growth opportunity that we see in entertainment. Aditi has played a pivotal part in getting the company to where we are today and I am excited to see the new heights she will help the company scale with this expanded mandate.”
3one4 Capital’s founding partner, Pranav Pai, a large investor in Pocket Aces, said, “The Pocket Aces team has used their deep experience in the field to connect with and grow amongst the largest digital audiences in India. Through grounded empathy for their audience’s consumption behaviours and tastes, Pocket Aces has reimagined the digital entertainment model. The company’s content channels are vertically integrated, from the creators up to the audience, and now leverage their position of strength and scale to continuously innovate and expand the frontier. We are excited to continue our support for the next wave of growth as the team pursues an orbital shift to newer heights.”
Pocket Aces reaches over 50 million people on a weekly basis clocking over 700 million video views every month. The company has grown its revenue seven times in the last three years and is on track to become profitable this year, the company further said.
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.
