iWorld
Shruti Sinha reflects on her role in Amazon miniTV’s Campus Beats
Mumbai: Amazon miniTV – Amazon’s free video streaming service recently premiered the teen drama ‘Campus Beats’. The dance drama captures the joys, struggles, and passion, friendship, love, and immense competition among the student factions. The fascinating series follows a group of students from a dance academy, Mumbai University of Movement and Dance, also known as the University of M.A.D. The show features Shantanu Maheshwari, Shruti Sinha, Sahaj Chahal, Tanvi Gadkari, Harsh Dingwanii, Tanya Bhushan, Dhanshree Yadav, Teriya Magar, Adnan Khan, and Rohan Pal in pivotal roles.
Shruti Sinha essays the role of Netra, who is bold yet has a mystery surrounding her, which she conceals from her batchmates. She gets admitted to the dance academy through a welfare program and is labelled as the ‘Backgrounder a.k.a. BG’. Netra secretly keeps on giving inspector Shinde information, but when she learns about the system’s conflict surrounding quotas versus non-quota matters, she decides to confront it and fight back.
Talking about her first reaction after grasping the role of Netra for Campus Beats, Shruti shared, “Honestly, when I got the call, I double-checked, asking, “Are you sure this is happening?” because the audition process took a month and I wasn’t sure whether I was going to get the part. I was so excited that I ran over to my mom and we had a great time celebrating.”
Talking about her character Netra, she added, “What I admire about Netra is that she is the polar opposite of who I am in real life. She is very gutsy, I am also gutsy but not like her. One thing I adore about Netra is that she will go to any length for the people she loves, which I think I relate to greatly. Netra cannot stand injustice, and she is also unafraid of the consequences.”
Campus Beats is streaming exclusively on Amazon miniTV, which you can watch for free on the Amazon shopping app and on Fire TV. You can now also download the Amazon miniTV app on Playstore.
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.
