iWorld
Hotstar breaks norm, introduces CinePlay
MUMBAI: Hotstar, India’s leading streaming platform today announced that it is expanding its Premium Service and offering a new storytelling format, CinePlay, under its Originals banner. Hotstar Originals’ CinePlay will showcase classics and contemporary stories from the theatre world presented in a cinematic fashion. Each CinePlay will bring together the work of leading playwrights, internationally renowned directors and the best of the actors from both the theatre and cinema worlds.
Available exclusively in India for Hotstar’s premium subscribers, 20 CinePlay titles will release regularly on the platform, starting with 5 titles being released on 13 February.
The announcement comes close on the heels of the partnership with Disney that Hotstar announced last month. With that announcement, Hotstar Premium had put together a portfolio of American TV shows and movies from three of the best studios in the world: Disney, Fox and HBO.
The introduction of CinePlay to the Premium service represents another big jump for the platform, which has already established stellar leadership in the highly competitive and fast evolving space of on-demand content. According to third party measurement company App Annie, Hotstar was the largest premium streaming platform in the month of January in India with more than 60 million users. Its watch time for the month was more than 12 times that of Amazon Prime Video and more than 20 times that of Netflix.
CinePlays will bring some of the most renowned stories from theatre from leading playwrights like Dr. Vijay Tendulkar, Badal Sircar, Mohan Rakesh, and Mahesh Dattani amongst others. The productions have been helmed by renowned directors such as Santosh Sivan and Nagesh Kukunoor. They will feature some of the most compelling actors of the theatre and film world including Nandita Das, Saurabh Shukla, Lillete Dubey, Swanand Kirkire, Namit Das, Darshan Jariwalla, Rajpal Yadav, Sonali Kulkarni and others.
“We love breaking norms,” said Hotstar CEO Ajit Mohan. “We have never believed in the artificial separation between television and digital audiences. Our aspiration for Hotstar Originals has always been to introduce new formats and stories that are not being explored by anyone, irrespective of the screen. CinePlay is a big leap forward for storytellers and their audiences in the country. We are excited to bring an entirely new way of storytelling to a generation that has not been exposed to either these stories or to the power of theatre.”
“CinePlay is presenting a new visual language that blends the grammar of theatre and the power of cinema. We are excited to be exclusive partners with Hotstar in bringing these rich and relatable stories to every screen. With this collaboration, we hope to capture the imagination of the digital generation through an immersive cinematic experience of the theatre,” said CinePlay chairman and co-founder Subodh Maskara.
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.
