iWorld
Kevin Vaz charts JioStar’s rise as India’s next global content engine
SINGAPORE: JioStar is no longer just a broadcaster. It is becoming a storytelling machine built for a billion imaginations, according to Kevin Vaz, CEO Entertainment at JioStar, who addressed global leaders at the Asia TV Forum and Market 2025 in Singapore.
In a session titled Powering the Next Wave of a Billion Imaginations, Vaz said India is stepping into a defining era where technology, talent and sheer audience scale are reshaping how stories travel across the world. With a population of 1.4 billion and a median age of 29, he described India as one of the youngest and most agile content markets anywhere.
Vaz painted a portrait of a country bursting with creative energy. With 22 official languages and more than 1,500 dialects, India produces more than 200,000 hours of television, 1,800 films and over 400 web series each year. He called this a content ecosystem that few nations can match.
The boom in consumption, he noted, has been fuelled by both television and digital platforms. India now counts 900 million television viewers, 900 million internet users, 500 million social media users and more than 85 million connected TV homes. This growth is pushing a new blend of storytelling and technology that is changing how audiences experience entertainment.
At the centre of this shift, said Vaz, is JioStar. On TV, the network commands a 35 per cent market share with more than 90 channels in ten languages, reaching over 760 million viewers monthly. Five of the top ten shows across genres regularly come from its stable. On digital, JioHotstar has crossed one billion downloads on Google Play and engages more than 400 million monthly active users, while JioStar’s entertainment and sports offerings now reach almost the entire connected TV universe in India.
Vaz spotlighted JioStar’s broad content slate including women led dramas that spark dinner table debates, youth driven non fiction, high energy formats, a growing kids portfolio and global entertainment available through JioHotstar. He also described sports as one of JioStar’s strongest growth engines, with the platform emerging as the country’s home of sports with a massive, unified bouquet of tournaments.
Looking ahead, Vaz outlined priorities across AI driven content innovation, accelerated connected TV growth, new bite sized formats such as micro dramas and wider global distribution.
He concluded with a vision for the decade. JioStar, he said, aims not just to deliver content but to build an imagination ecosystem where technology, culture and creativity move in step to redefine how stories are created, shared and enjoyed.
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.
