iWorld
ZEE5 premieres kannada blockbuster Seetharama Kalyana
MUMBAI: ZEE5, India’s fastest growing multilingual OTT platform continues to strengthen its movies catalogue with the world digital premiere of the super-hit Kannada film ‘Seetharama Kalyana’. The film written and directed by A. Harsha has a heady dose of action, romance, comedy and family drama. Starring Nikhil Gowda, Rachita Ram in lead roles, the superhit film is will premiere 13th September 2019 exclusively on ZEE5.
Sharing his excitement Nikhil Gowda said, “Our film is packaged with high voltage drama and action. It received a phenomenal response in the theatres and now anybody who wants to watch it can catch it now on ZEE5, from the comfort of their home.”
Writer and Director A. Harsha commented, “Seetharama Kalyanais a complete pot boiler. The film received much love at the box office and it is now available on ZEE5, for all those who missed it in theatres. We are really excited to partner with ZEE5 and are sure the film will travel further because of their sheer reach.”
Aparna Acharekar, Programming Head, ZEE5,commented, “Seetharama Kalyana is a mass entertainer and we are thrilled to add it in our movie bucket. 2019 has been an exciting yearduring which we have added interesting films and series on our platform.We are committed to build a robust library across languages.”
In November last year, ZEE5 introduced regional premium packs (Kannada, Tamil and Telugu) for subscribers which have seen great success. The ZEE5 Tamil Premium pack is priced competitively at Rs. 49/- for one month and Rs. 499/- for a year.
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.
