iWorld
Sajith Sivanandan becomes EVP & head of Disney+ Hotstar
Mumbai: Disney’s international content and operations group has appointed Sajith Sivanandan as executive vice president and head of Disney+ Hotstar.
Sivanandan, who joins Disney+ Hotstar from Google, will start in October and report to Disney’s international content and operations group chairman Rebecca Campbell and Disney Star president K Madhavan.
Sivanandan will be in charge of Disney+ Hotstar’s overall business operations in India, with direct responsibility for defining the streaming service’s strategic business priorities and charting a product roadmap for the streaming service’s continued and exponential growth in the coming years.
He will also collaborate closely with local leadership in international markets, as well as the Disney+ team in the United States, to drive the continued growth of Disney+ Hotstar, which has become India’s leading streaming service due to its unrivalled scale, innovation, and breadth of content.
Speaking on the appointment, Campbell said, “I am delighted to have Sajith join our executive team and lead the innovative team at Disney+ Hotstar. His deep experience in the region, combined with his strong leadership and business management skills, will greatly benefit Disney+ Hotstar as the platform embarks on its next phase of growth.”
Adding to this, Madhavan said, “After witnessing rapid growth in recent years, the OTT market in India has entered a transformational phase which calls for an ingenious approach to the manner in which we innovate for growth. Sajith’s wealth of experience that he has gained over the years makes him the best person to lead Disney+ Hotstar on this journey.”
“Disney and Star are brands with an incredibly rich history of innovation, user focus, and storytelling, and Disney+ Hotstar brings those attributes together flawlessly. The opportunity to come back home to where I started my career and to work alongside a very talented team to serve Disney+ Hotstar users in India and in emerging countries is one that is both a privilege and an honour,” added Sivanandan.
Sivanandan is an accomplished professional with extensive experience in strategic business and leadership roles in global markets.
He has been with Google for over 14 years, most recently as managing director and business head of Google Pay and Next Billion User Initiatives for the APAC region.
Prior to that, he led Google Pay in India, where he was responsible for starting from scratch, defining and designing the overall strategy and growth for the service in the country.
Sivanandan began his professional career in 1996 with Star TV in India, where he managed Channel V’s North India market.
He attended St. Columba’s School in Delhi and attended Hindu College at Delhi University.
He has two master’s degrees in management, one in marketing from the Fore School of Management in New Delhi and the other in finance from the Asian Institute of Management in Manila.
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.
