iWorld
Fancode live-streams Hero Santosh Trophy and Hero Futsal Championship 2023
Mumbai: FanCode, India’s premier sports streaming platform, will exclusively live-stream the final round of the Hero Santosh Trophy starting February 10. It has also acquired the digital rights to live-stream the Hero Futsal Championship 2023, which began on 8 February . Both tournaments will stream on the FanCode mobile app (Android, iOS), FanCode TV app available on Android TV, Amazon Fire TV Stick, Jio STB, Samsung TV, and on www.fancode.com. Football fans can stream both tournaments for free.
All eyes are on defending champions Kerala in this 76th edition of the Santosh Trophy. The final round in Odisha will see 12 teams battle it out for the coveted trophy. The teams have been divided in two groups of six each. Group A comprises Kerala, Punjab, Goa, Maharashtra, Karnataka and Odisha. Group B has West Bengal, Meghalaya, Delhi, Manipur, Services and Railways.
The second edition of the Hero Futsal Championship will see 14 teams going head-to-head. The teams are divided into two groups, each group with seven teams. It is taking place in the Indira Gandhi Indoor Stadium, New Delhi.
FanCode has added to its repertoire of football events with these tournaments. In domestic football, it is streaming the Scoreline Kerala Premier League and the Goa Professional League. FanCode has also streamed top-tier international football such as the Dubai Super Cup, featuring the likes of Arsenal FC, Liverpool FC, and AC Milan.
AIFF Secretary General Shaji Prabhakaran said “We welcome FanCode in this partnership to live-stream the Hero Santosh Trophy and the Hero Futsal Club Championship. FanCode is a well-known digital platform having an impressive footprint that will help us take the Hero Santosh Trophy and the Hero Futsal Club Championship to a larger audience in India. We wish them the very best.”
FanCode co-founder Yannick Colaco said “We are delighted to expand our football roster with the Hero Santosh Trophy 2022-23 and Hero Futsal Championship 2023. The Hero Santosh Trophy is a part of Indian football’s heritage and it is a moment of pride for us to stream it for our users. We want to take grassroot and domestic football to a wider audience and foster increased interest and passion for football in 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.
