iWorld
Aim to get hundreds of millions of subscribers for Disney+ Hotstar: Uday Shankar
KOLKATA: Disney+ Hotstar is not going to limit itself to sports and classic Disney+ library in India. While last year Hotstar went into original content, after its rebranding to Disney+ Hotstar, it is chasing a large audience also with direct-to-digital premiers of bollywood movies. The streaming service which crossed eight million subscribers within one week of its launch is currently looking at ramping up subscriber numbers in India.
“What we are looking at is to get tens of millions, if not hundreds of millions, of people to subscribe to Disney+ Hotstar. Once we do that, it becomes an attractive business with many possibilities,” The Walt Disney Company APAC chairman and Star and Disney India president Uday Shankar said in an interview with ET Now.
While Shankar was asked if TVoD can be a scalable model in OTT business, he did not agree. “I am not a big fan of the pay-per-view model. Those are very transactional with customers and I don’t think a platform which has a long-term vision and wants to be the substitute for TV in this country should do something like pay-per-view. Tomorrow, we might change our strategy but that’s not what we are looking at right now,” he added.
Disney+ Hotstar could reach 93 million paying subscribers by 2025 at monthly ARPUs under $1, as per a report from MPA. It also added that the service’s major differentiation has been its vast aggregation of premium local and international entertainment and sports, driving its present-day addressable market to 100 million + subscribers.
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.
