iWorld
ZEE5’s original ‘Sexpionage’ to premiere in early 2020
MUMBAI: ZEE5, the largest producer of originals in India, aims to continue its leadership position in original content in 2020. The platform has announced Sexpionage, an anthology of films produced by Azure Entertainment (Sunir Kheterpal) and co-produced by Hussain Zaidi & Jaspinder Kang for Gold Mohur. The film is on a scripting stage and will go on floors in early 2020.
Sexpionage is written by renowned writers Bilal Siddiqui, Vibha Singh, Rahul Patel & Amit Agarwal, and Vivaan Shah. The stories revolve around spy agents stuck in a high-stakes spy game between two nations. Sexpionage is embellished with shocking exposures, betrayal, international espionage, and sexual favours to save each other.
Hussain Zaidi said, “My partner, Jaspinder Singh Kang and I, are proud to be associated with AZURE Entertainment to bring this four-film spy thriller series, on the common theme of Honey Traps. I am extremely excited about collaborating with a top OTT platform like ZEE5 for these films.”
Azure Entertainment producer Sunir Kheterpal said, "This is our maiden venture with Gold Mohur and we are looking forward to creating these exciting movies based on years of research by Mr. Hussain Zaidi. Azure Entertainment has time & again sought creative collaborations on high-concept and content driven stories and this new venture in the digital space reinforces the same ethos."
"Co-producing with Sunir for this beautiful and special project makes us so grateful. ZEE5 coming up with such real content makes the audience witness some of the great unheard stories which need to reach out to people. I'm very excited about this association", said Hussain Zaidi.
ZEE5 India programming head Aparna Acharekar said, “Sexpionage is an amalgamation of interesting stories conceptualized by renowned writer Hussain Zaidi. It will consist of four spy thriller films and we have a fantastic team working on it. We are certain it will perform well on our platform. It is for our audiences, especially for those who love thrillers.”
Sexpionage is Azure's first foray into content development & production for the OTT platforms for which it has joined hands with Gold Mohur, which is a newly formed content curation company owned by Hussain Zaidi, the celebrity crime journalist & writer and his partner, Jaspinder Singh Kang.
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.
