iWorld
ZEE5 and Nestaway partner for an exclusive offer
MUMBAI: ZEE5, India’s fastest growing OTT platform, and Nestaway Technologies, India's largest managed home rental network, announced their partnership to offer a bespoke gift of ZEE5 premium subscription to Nestaway Assure customers. Nestaway Assure is India’s first professional home maintenance subscription service, which aims at making the living experience in a rental house stress-free. This offer is available for all Nestaway customers who choose to avail Nestaway Assure services.
Manish Aggarwal, Business Head, ZEE5 India, said, “Over the past year, we have been able to grow our subscriber base via associations with like-minded partners and brands. We see great synergies between the Nestaway customer and ZEE5 viewer. We are confident that they will enjoy the rich content repertoire and seamless viewing experience that ZEE5 offers today.”
Speaking on the partnership, Chirag Heda, Head of Customer Experience, Nestaway,said, “At Nestaway, our key focus is to eliminate the inconveniences in day-to-day living. Through Nestaway Assure, we help remove the uncertainty &hassles in home maintenance through proactive house checks & regular deep cleaning. We are extremely glad to be partnering with ZEE5 for the same and hope to bring their incredible on-the-go entertainment experience to all our valued customers. In the next few months, we will also launch Assure across 10,000 houses outside our own Nestaway network.”
Nestaway Technologies was started in 2015 and has more than 55,000 tenants and 25,000 homes in their network. Nestaway till date has raised $94.2 million in funding by investors such as Tiger Global, IDG Ventures, Ratan Tata, Yuri Milner, and Goldman Sachs. With the acquisition of Zenify in May last year Nestaway also entered the family rental solution business. Nestaway has its presence in 12 cities – Bengaluru, Gurgaon, Hyderabad, Noida, Pune, Delhi, Ghaziabad, Greater Noida, Faridabad, Navi Mumbai, Thane and Mumbai and is planning to launch in ten other cities including Mysore and Chennai soon.
With over 3500 films, 500+ TV shows, 4000+ music videos, 35+ theatre plays and 90+ LIVE TV Channels across 12 languages, ZEE5 truly presents a blend of unrivalled content offering for its viewers across the nation. With ZEE5, the global content of Zindagi as a brand, which was widely appreciated across the country, has also been brought back for its loyal viewers.
Pricing: Freemium pricing model with both free and paid premium content (including Originals) to cater to a mix of audiences. Viewers who subscribe to the ZEE5 subscription pack will get access to the entire library of content with – 99/- for 1 month and 999/- for a year. Subscribers can avail a 50% cashback on the above-mentioned price by paying through Paytm.
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.
