iWorld
Alibaba’s India OTT may launch in three months
MUMBAI: According to a report by The Ken, Chinese ecommerce giant Alibaba has announced plans to launch an over-the-top (OTT) video service in India over the next three months. The service will be introduced in partnership with its Indian investee company Paytm and mobile Internet subsidiary UCWeb, the report said.
However, in a statement made to Indian Television Dot Com, an Alibaba Group spokesperson said: “India is key in our globalization strategy and we are very committed to growing our existing businesses in this market in the long term. As a policy we do not comment on market speculation.”
“It’s an obligatory play. The global player does it so we have no option but to follow it,” the report quoted a senior Paytm official as saying.
Over the last several months, Jack Ma-led Alibaba has reportedly been scouring the Indian market looking for quality content creators and production houses in Mumbai.
The ecommerce behemoth is also reportedly in the process of hiring a strategic alliance head in Gurugram as well as a strategic alliance head for Video in either Mumbai or Gurugram.
Both of these positions would fall under the Alibaba-owned UCWeb’s business, sources have revealed. It is, however, believed that the move will be spearheaded locally by Damon Xi, head of UCWeb India and Indonesia.
Currently, Alibaba has two contest-based products in India – mobile browser UCWeb and We-Media, which together boast over 200 Mn users. Launched in March 2017 with an initial investment of Rs 5 crore ($782000), We-Media is a UCWeb-operated platform wherein users can post their own content in the form of articles, photos and videos.
Alibaba currently has a formidable presence in the Chinese OTT video market through Youku Tudou, which it acquired in 2015. Youku and Tudou are, essentially, two free video sites like YouTube that were merged in 2012.
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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.
