iWorld
Star India’s ambitious foray into content with Hotstar Specials
MUMBAI: Star India, the nation’s storyteller and its most innovative content company across TV, Films & Sports, is ready with its next big leap in content on the back of its OTT, Hotstar. The company today announced the launch of Hotstar Specials, a bold and ambitious content foray featuring shows from India’s most acclaimed storytellers.
“Star has always challenged conventions and been at the forefront of content reinvention in India" said Sanjay Gupta, MD, Star India. “With the mobile phone leading an explosion in the number of screens in the country, we feel that our content also needs to reinvent and boldly move forward. With Hotstar Specials we hope to create the biggest Indian stories delivered to a billion screens. To bring this vision alive, we are proud to partner with a stellar line up of talent who are headlining our first set of Hotstar Specials"
For its first set ofHotstar Specials, Star India has partnered with the best storytellers of India including Shekhar Kapur, Neeraj Pandey, Kabir Khan, NikkhilAdvani, Ram Madhvani, Venkat Prabhu, Sudhir Mishra, Tigmanshu Dhulia, NageshKukunoor, Mahesh Manjrekar, Vishal Furia, Rohan Sippy, Debbie Rao, Sharad Devarajan and Salman Khan!
Hotstar Specials will feature an extensive variety of Indian stories, mounted on a big scale, unconstrained by format. The company's ambition is not to make this a narrow or niche play but to explode into the consciousness of the country in an unprecedented way.
Hotstar Specials will enable makers to tell their most passionate stories and provide them unmatched reach. The stories will provide a burst of variety across genres and formats and will be available in seven languages for viewers to consume them in a language of their choice. They will leverage the unprecedented reach of Hotstar to reach the length and breadth of the country and also reach global audiences. With 350 million downloads and over 150mn monthly active users, Hotstar is the country’s biggest OTT, significantly bigger than its closest competitors. The launch of Hotstar Specials is yet another moment of disruption for Hotstar, which has been at the forefront of change in the space of digital content in India.
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.
