iWorld
90% of new internet users consume regional content in India
MUMBAI: According to Google official, 90 per cent of new internet users in India consume content in regional languages. With increasing internet penetration and India being the most internet consumption heavy country with over 530 million users, it is giving content platforms to bag this opportunity and follow the ‘vernacular’ fashion as the most trending topic in the industry.
From writing to video/audio content, here are the fastest growing regional content startups of 2019.
Tiktok
TikTok is a social media video app for creating and sharing short lip-sync, comedy, and talent videos. It is arguably India’s fastest-growing and most-downloaded app today, with 200 million users in Tier I, II, and III and even the deepest pockets of India to share their passion and creative expression. Available in 10 Indian languages, Tiktok added 88.6 million users in the country early this year. By connecting and empowering digital Indians through content, Tiktok looks forward to making a positive contribution to the country’s thriving creative economy.
Momspresso.com
Momspresso.com is the largest user-generated content sharing platform that offers support to women across the country, not just in their journeys as parents but also in their lives. Launched in 2010, based out of Gurgaon, Haryana, it is a platform that attracts 12000 bloggers and 4000 video creators, and sees 83Mn monthly page views for its blogs whereas 163Mn monthly video views in 10 different languages including English, Hindi, Gujarati, Bengali, Marathi, Malayalam, Telugu, Tamil, Punjabi, and Kannada. Momspresso eyes 35 crores of revenue for the year 2019-2020; and closed the year 2018-2019 at 16 crores. Over 100 brands (Dettol, Dove, Nestle, etc.) have engaged with Momspresso.com in the last 12 months to connect with women and are actively spending on regional content to tap vernacular users. Earlier this year, it also launched India’s first digital vernacular agency, Mompresso Bharat.
Hubhopper
Launched in the year 2015, Hubhopper is India's largest podcast and audio-on-demand platform at present. With over 1 million hours of content spread across 12 vernacular languages, Hubhopper is present across 15 million touchpoints. It has managed to change the way people consume audio content in India. Hubhopper has launched ‘Hubhopper Studio’ an online studio that enables the potential content creators to launch their very own podcast in 3 simple steps: Record, Launch, and Distribute. It provides independent and small-town podcasters with all the assistance and their podcasts get featured on Hubhopper under ‘Hubhopper Original Program’, which has been a hit amongst both urban and rural listeners and aims to on-board 5000 podcasters in the next 1 year. Hubhopper envisions to grow parallel with the audio streaming industry and keep making the process of content consumption and creation simpler and more beneficial while emerging as one of the best content-disseminating platforms.
Vokal
Vokal, a knowledge-sharing platform for Hindi users recently added 10 regional languages (Telugu, Kannada, Bengali, Tamil, Malayalam, Gujarati, Marathi, Punjabi, Oriya, and Assamese) on its platform allowing sharing of information and get answers to queries. Trying to bridge the information and knowledge gap among the non-English internet users by enabling peer-to-peer knowledge sharing, the platform sees a huge scope for such a service in regional languages. Vokal has more than 2 million monthly active users and it is aiming to take the same to 15-20 million by the end of 2019.
Sharechat
Similar to Facebook and Twitter, ShareChat enables users to post and share videos, songs, images, and other content, as well as discover content that is topical and trending. Launched in January 2015, it offers the content consumption and sharing platform only in Indian vernacular languages. ShareChat now boasts of 60 million monthly active users and aims to double its MAU by December 2020, it is home to 15 Indic languages. It aims to strengthen its presence in Tier-II cities.
Trell
Fondly referred to as the Video Pinterest for India powered by user-generated original content, Trell is a community-based platform enabling lifestyle discovery through meaningful content in various Indian languages. Trell bridges the gap between users looking for meaningful content around lifestyle inspirations and content creators or aspiring influencers who wish to create vlogs of their interests and lifestyle stories via videos and photos.
Trell has a highly engaging community of 1 Million Monthly Active Users on the mobile app who did 80 Million Content Views last month [Cumulative: 190 Million Views]. Trell App has been downloaded more than 3 Million times historically with 1.6 Million original and meaningful content pieces around lifestyle to date. All content creators are acquired organically by virtue of various viral loops and growing community on the platform. Trell aims to be the biggest lifestyle community-content-commerce platform of India by 2020.
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.
