iWorld
Matka King campaign turns Mumbai into a city of cards
Massive card billboard, buses and shelters recreate 1960s Bombay.
MUMBAI: Mumbai isn’t just shuffling traffic this week, it’s dealing in drama, one card at a time. A high-impact outdoor campaign for Matka King has quite literally taken over the city, transforming everyday streets into a living, breathing throwback to the world of 1960s Bombay. At the centre of the spectacle is a towering billboard near the city’s T1 airport, created by visual artist Rob, assembling hundreds of playing cards into a striking portrait of Brij Bhatti, the infamous Matka King portrayed by Vijay Varma. The installation doesn’t just sit on the skyline; it commands attention, pulling eyes upward in a city otherwise known for looking straight ahead.
But the campaign doesn’t stop at a single visual. The streets themselves have been drafted into the narrative. Vehicles wrapped entirely in vintage playing card designs are cruising through Mumbai, while bus shelters constructed to resemble houses of cards have begun appearing across key locations. The effect is immersive less an advertisement and more a temporary rewriting of the city’s visual language, where modern Mumbai briefly slips into a stylised past.
The campaign leans heavily into experiential storytelling, extending the show’s world beyond screens and into public spaces. By using tactile, physical installations rather than purely digital amplification, it taps into a growing trend in entertainment marketing where scale, spectacle and shareability converge to create cultural moments rather than just promotional bursts.
Created by Abhay Koranne and directed by Nagraj Popatrao Manjule, the series features a wide ensemble cast including Kritika Kamra, Sai Tamhankar, Siddharth Jadhav and Gulshan Grover, among others. Produced under banners including Roy Kapur Films, the show is currently streaming on Prime Video across India and more than 240 countries and territories.
For now, though, the real action isn’t just on screen, it’s unfolding at traffic signals, bus stops and billboards. In a city that rarely pauses, this is one campaign that has managed to stop people mid-step and deal itself straight into public attention.
iWorld
Meta plans 8,000 layoffs in new AI-led restructuring wave
First phase from May 20 may cut 10 per cent workforce amid AI pivot.
MUMBAI: At Meta, the future may be artificial but the cuts are very real. The social media giant is reportedly preparing a fresh round of layoffs, with an initial wave expected to impact around 8,000 employees as it doubles down on its artificial intelligence ambitions. According to a Reuters report, the first phase of job cuts is slated to begin on May 20, targeting roughly 10 per cent of Meta’s global workforce. With nearly 79,000 employees on its rolls as of December 31, the move marks one of the company’s most significant workforce reductions in recent years.
And this may only be the beginning. Sources indicate that additional layoffs are being planned for the second half of the year, although the scale and timing remain fluid, likely to be shaped by how Meta’s AI capabilities evolve in the coming months. Earlier reports had suggested that total cuts in 2026 could reach 20 per cent or more of its workforce.
The restructuring comes as chief executive Mark Zuckerberg continues to steer the company towards an AI-first operating model, committing hundreds of billions of dollars to the transition. Internally, this shift is already visible: teams within Reality Labs have been reorganised, engineers have been moved into a newly formed Applied AI unit, and a Meta Small Business division has been created to align with broader structural changes.
The trend is hardly isolated. Across the tech sector, companies are trimming headcount while investing aggressively in automation. Amazon, for instance, has reportedly cut around 30,000 corporate roles nearly 10 per cent of its white-collar workforce citing efficiency gains driven by AI. Data from Layoffs.fyi shows over 73,000 tech employees have already lost jobs this year, compared with 153,000 in all of 2024.
For Meta, the move echoes its earlier “year of efficiency” in 2022–23, when about 21,000 roles were eliminated amid slowing growth and market pressures. This time, however, the backdrop is different. The company is financially stronger, generating over $200 billion in revenue and $60 billion in profit last year, with shares up 3.68 per cent year-to-date though still below last summer’s peak.
That contrast underlines the shift underway. These layoffs are less about survival and more about reinvention. As Meta restructures itself around AI from autonomous coding agents to advanced machine learning systems, the question is no longer whether the company will change, but how many roles will be left unchanged when it does.
