iWorld
Zee5 inks multi-show partnership with Applause Entertainment
Mumbai: Streaming platform Zee5 has announced a strategic partnership with content and IP studio Applause Entertainment, a venture of Aditya Birla Group for a multi-show association. The two content companies will collaborate to create a robust original content slate of new Zee5 originals in Hindi across genres to entertain viewers across the globe.
The first offering as part of the partnership is titled “Kaun Banegi Shikharwati’”– a dramedy series with a unique take on a dysfunctional royal family. The show will be produced by Applause Entertainment in association with Emmay Entertainment and directed by Gauravv Chawla and Ananya Banerjee. The original will premiere exclusively on Zee5 in January 2022.
“Over the last four years, Applause has created a diverse slate of content and explored stories across genres, languages, and geographies. We are thrilled that our first outing with Zee5 is with Kaun Banegi Shikarwati, a light-hearted, heart-warming dramedy that is both quirky and delightful and boasts a stellar cast of actors. We look forward to a long and fruitful partnership with Zee5 and help contribute in a small way to their global ambition,” said Applause Entertainment CEO Sameer Nair.
Zeel president-content and international markets Punit Misra said, “Zee5’s content design principles centre around intimately knowing our viewers and building a bouquet of engaging and entertaining offerings for our multiple consumer cohorts. While Consumer Intimacy is at the heart of our content creation philosophy, our Content Creator Partners are the other crucial pillar in our approach.”
“In 2021, Zee5 has made a concerted effort to associate with premium content creators across languages and genres, a move that has enabled us to inch closer to our overall vision of ‘Entertainment inclusion’,” said Zee5 India chief business officer Manish Kalra. “Applause Entertainment has had a strong record of creating some of the most popular shows of recent times and with this association, Zee5 is confident of enriching our content slate even further.”
The move is in line with Zee5’s content-first approach of forging more partnerships within the creative ecosystem to build a diverse slate of originals and movies. The platform had earlier sealed partnerships with TVF (The Viral Fever), Ashwiny Iyer Tiwari and Nitesh Tiwari, and Red Chillies Entertainment to deliver several new shows across the digital entertainment ecosystem.
“Kaun Banegi Shikharwati’” features a spectacular cast of renowned Bollywood faces, including Naseeruddin Shah essaying the role of a King while Lara Dutta Bhupathi, Soha Ali Khan, Kritika Kamra, Anya Singh play his daughters, and Raghubir Yadav, Cyrus Sahukar, Varun Thakur and Anurag Sinha play key roles.
Elaborating on the new show, Emmay Entertainment producer Nikkhil Advani said, “Kaun Banegi Shikarwati offers a quintessential story of Indian families that’s replete with oddities and conflicts. But at the core of it, lies unfiltered emotions that are sure to resonate strongly with the masses.”
Zee5 chief creative officer- Hindi Originals Nimisha Pandey said there is an increasing need for family-viewing content in a post-pandemic era and a multi-dimensional drama like “Kaun Banegi Shikharwati’” works beautifully in that aspect. “We hope that the audience enjoys the roller coaster of emotions with this series,” she added.
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.
