iWorld
Stars N Stripes joins hands with Viacom 18 to build a short video
Mumbai: After successfully collaborating with short format video giants like TikTok and Snapchat, award-winning creative agency Stars N Stripes, has added another feather to its cap by partnering with Voot as its digital agency and tech solution experts. As a part of the mandate, the agency will create unique, creative, and interactive snackable content for their short video platform, Voot Shots. With their digital strategy and content approach, Stars N Stripes aims to strike a chord with the audiences by engaging and giving them an insight into Viacom 18’s exhilarating shows.
This new collaboration aims to increase the app’s monthly active users (MAUs) and daily active users (DAUs). The new tab on its app provides videos that are in the range of 40 to 120 seconds and are made from Viacom’s network content across channels.
Stars N Stripes creative head & co-founder Kunal Gavankar said, “We have been in the digital content space since our inception, but this association is different. The content on the platform has great potential to be a better redemption of itself as short format videos. We are excited to co-curate interesting content properties with Voot Shots.”
Since the launch of Voot Shots, Stars N Stripes has published close to 30,000 videos on Voot Shots resulting in over 100 million views and an average watch time of 60-120 seconds per video. Additionally, the platform has generated close to 50 million likes and shares across videos.
Talking about what differentiates Voot Shots from the rest of the short-format video platforms available in India, Kunal explains, “While Netflix has Fast Laughs and Discovery has Shorts, these are all short-form videos but they are all cut downs. With Voot Shots, we ensure that each video is sharable, trending, and likable for which we apply a great creative strategy to each video, turning it into something interesting and unique, and attention-grabbing rather than it being a regular cut-down of a show’s high points.”
While streaming platforms in India have not yet begun monetizing the SFV (short format videos) content, Stars N Stripes co-founder, and business officer Rahul Sheth, feels that the day is not far “Every single OTT platform is focusing on building a way where they can not only engage the audience by giving them a lot more than the long format content but also looking at it from a perspective of generating revenue by offering engaging SFV.”
“Bite-sized content is probably the best way to deliver the maximum impact in a short time. We at Stars N Stripes pioneered making short videos in collaboration with Viacom 18. The intent is to look at entertaining viewers who don’t want to watch an entire episode or a web series and want to consume snackable content in under 120 seconds,” concluded Rahul Sheth.
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.
