iWorld
Amazon Prime Video aims to keep evolving with customer taste
MUMBAI: Amazon Prime Video is boosting its content play in the market. The OTT platform is all set to stream its fifth Indian original Mirzapur from 16 November. In a media roundtable, Amazon Prime Video India content director and head Vijay Subramaniam also added that it will scale up originals further in 2020. Nine new Hindi originals are planned for 2019.
“I think it’s extremely important to understand that content has scale cinematically and our marketing matches that. It’s important for customers to feel that they are watching premium content and all of that in Rs 129 in a month,” Subramaniam commented.
It has been two years since Amazon Prime Video launched in India in the burgeoning OTT market. Since then, it has been very focused on customer taste and preferences. However, as India is a diverse market, the company wants to ensure that everything it does embraces diversity.
“It is a large market with multiple demographics and multiple segments. So it’s important to understand how we can cater to all of them consistently. Our customers are constantly evolving in their taste and preferences and we need to be updated on the kind of stories they watch and would love to watch. We need to go on that evolution with them," Subramaniam added.
The company, unlike its rival Netflix, has prioritised localisation since beginning. While the service already has content in six regional languages including Hindi, Tamil, Telugu, Marathi, Bengali and Kannada, it is also looking at adding more regional languages in next 12-18 months.
Interestingly, Subramaniam said that when new a language offering is launched, customers first seek movies. Hence, it tries to ensure adding the best and latest movies in the language to the library. After understanding their taste and preference, it adds content in other forms including originals. Right now the regional languages under evaluation for series-based content are Tamil and Telugu.
“In Tamil and Telugu, after having operated for a year, we looked at the opportunity to produce some series. Gangster was our first, another one in Tamil is coming out at the end of this month. These are both pilots in that sense. By putting these out we are trying to learn and understand our customers and get their feedback on what they like to watch. And once we have that we will definitely double down and scale up our originals in regional languages,” he added.
For the new nine-episode web series Mirzapur, Amazon Prime Video India has again collaborated with Excel Media & Entertainment after the Emmy winning Inside Edge. Set in the heartland of India, the show revolves around drugs, guns and the politics of power in a land where might is right. For the new show, while there have been enough large-scale outdoor marketing, there will be a lot of initiatives on the digital front too.
Amazon is confident that Mirzapur will make a mark not only in India but also globally. Breathe also did exceptionally well with 40 per cent viewers from outside India.
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.
