iWorld
Punitha Arumugam joins Hotstar as platform evangelist
MUMBAI: Hotstar has appointed Punitha Arumugam as platform evangelist, with the mandate to showcase the power of the platform to India’s leading brands.
The appointment is amongst Hotstar’s several initiatives to spur an increasing shift in marketing focus towards platforms with high quality content and engaged audiences.
Hotstar has increasingly raised the pressure on Google and Facebook, especially in an environment where many leading multinational brands have raised questions on the quality and safety of content on open platforms against which their ads are placed.
Hotstar CEO Ajit Mohan said, “Punitha is a leader in digital who has a fantastic track record of having aided the creation of many agency and brand partnerships in India and around the region. Hotstar is a special place for brands. We are delighted that she is coming on board to help us introduce the unique power of Hotstar to marketers around the country.”
Arumugam added, “Hotstar is one of the few video platforms in the world that has tremendous scale, very engaged audiences and remains open to advertisers. I believe the world of marketing is evolving quite rapidly, and Hotstar has the unique ability to marry the scale and engagement of television, with the power of audience understanding that digital brings. This is what brands have been waiting for, and I am delighted to play a role in shaping the next phase of the industry’s evolution.”
Arumugam, a media agency veteran, known for her leadership at Madison Media as group CEO for over 13 years, and at Google as agency director for over five years, is seen as a leader who shaped many agencies’ and marketers’ increasing use of digital platforms for brand building. At Google, she led the organisation’s agency business, first from India and later for the region from Singapore, as managing director, APAC agency for Google APAC. She is currently setting up her own firm in the communications tech space.
Her career spans over 20 years of media. She is widely acknowledged as the driving force behind Madison’s transformation to the second largest media agency in India and is credited for building a buoyant agency business for Google in India and Asia Pacific.
She will be operating from Mumbai for her role at Hotstar.
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.
