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Meta maps India’s digital evolution from creators to AI and micro dramas

Published

4 months ago

October 7, 2025

MUMBAI: At the 25th edition of Ficci Frames, Meta’s top leadership: Sandhya Devanathan, vice president, Meta India, and Meta India managing director and country head Arun Srinivas, laid out a comprehensive view of how India’s digital, entertainment, and creator ecosystems are evolving at breakneck speed.

From the rise of Gen Z as the dominant consumer force to the explosion of short-form video, AI-driven content, and micro-dramas, both leaders stressed on how India is not just adapting to global digital trends, it is carving them.

“India’s growth is unique and inevitable,” Devanathan said, opening her session on New Age Tech Platforms: Redefining Access, Innovation and Scale. “One trillion dollars of our future economy will be driven by digital.”

With over four billion reels shared globally every day, she noted, India stands out as both the largest creator market and a leader in the innovation of content.
That digital drive, she explained, rests on India’s growing online base of over 650 million social media users and 270 million online shoppers. Yet, she noted that to make prosperity more inclusive, more small businesses need to come online. Only about five million of India’s 65 million SMEs are currently digitally enabled.
“The Indian creator economy is among the most vibrant in the world,” Devanathan noted. “Creators here aren’t just entertainers, they are entrepreneurs, cultural catalysts, and small businesses rolled into one.”

Meta, she explained, continues to invest heavily in tools that empower creators to monetise their craft: from performance insights and AI-powered production aids to immersive advertising formats that help brands connect authentically with their digital-native audiences.

Devanathan also highlighted the versatility of “many Indias”: the digitally savvy India, the vernacular-first India, and the emerging India Each requires its own approach to content, access and engagement. “Winning in India,” she said, “means understanding these layers of India and building for all.”
Meta, she noted, sits at the heart of this digital revolution. India is now home to the largest community of Instagram creators and the biggest user base for Meta AI worldwide. The country also boasts one of the world’s largest Whatsapp communities, with over 200,000 small businesses using “Click to Whatsapp” to drive sales every month.
Beyond platforms, Meta is investing in digital infrastructure, from the Project Waterworth subsea cable (a subsea cable network that will span 50,000 kilometres and will reach depths of up to 7000 metres) to supporting data centres that fuel AI innovation. Devanathan also spoke about Meta’s work with the Nudge Institute and Pragati AI for Impact, which harnesses artificial intelligence for social good.

Building on that foundation, Arun Srinivas focused on the behavioural shifts defining media and entertainment consumption in India today, particularly among Gen Z and gen Alpha audiences.

“Gen Z isn’t the future; they’re the present,” he exclaimed. “They are already shaping how content is discovered, processed, and shared.”

According to Srinivas, the average Gen Z consumer processes information three times faster than previous generations and takes less than 1.5 seconds to decide whether to engage with a piece of content. “They need less attention, but more repetition,” he noted, explaining how frequency, rather than single exposure, now drives brand recall and conversions.

He also pointed to India’s massive short-form video boom, with 97 per cent of Indians watching short videos daily, surpassing television viewership. “Linear TV time is declining month on month,” he said, adding that this isn’t limited to urban India, “rural and small-town audiences are consuming just as much, if not more.”

Among the new frontiers Srinivas spotlighted was the rise of micro dramas: serialised short videos running between one and five minutes per episode.

“This is storytelling redesigned for the mobile-first world,” he said. “India’s short-form drama market could touch 10 billion dollars by 2030, driven by vernacular content and tier-II and tier-III audiences.”

Startups and creators are already experimenting with dubbed Korean and Chinese mini-series adapted for Indian viewers, marking a new phase in the fusion of entertainment and digital innovation.

Both Devanathan and Srinivas emphasised the transformative role of artificial intelligence across Meta’s platforms, from content creation and personalisation to ad optimisation and discovery.

“AI isn’t replacing creativity; it’s amplifying it,” Devanathan said. “It’s enabling creators to produce higher-quality work faster, and helping brands find the right audiences with precision.”

Srinivas added that more than four million advertisers globally used AI-generated creatives last quarter, producing over 15 million ad assets and achieving double-digit ROI improvements compared to campaigns created by humans.

Outlining Meta’s larger ambition, he noted that the company aims to make Meta AI the world’s most widely used personal assistant. “With more than 100 billion dollars invested in AI in just four years, we’re building systems that make digital creativity more accessible and intelligent for everyone,” he said.
Bringing that vision to life, Devanathan closed her session with an AI-generated video: a vivid cascade of colours that unfolded into the words, “Change is the canvas from which opportunity paints its masterpiece.”

Both leaders saw eye to eye on one message, that India’s digital future will be built at the intersection of creators, commerce, and connection.

Srinivas highlighted how Meta’s latest tools, such as the Edits app for easy video production and new AI-powered creative platforms, are enabling India’s vast creator base to thrive. Meanwhile, Devanathan emphasised Meta’s partnerships with brands, small businesses, and policymakers to foster a sustainable, inclusive digital ecosystem.

“Our goal,” she said, “is to ensure that India’s creative economy doesn’t just grow in size, it grows in diversity, opportunity, and global influence.”

Concluding the session, Srinivas offered a peek into Meta’s newest innovation, the Ray-Ban Meta smart glasses, designed to merge content, communication, and AI assistance in one device.

“These glasses are a glimpse of a future where connection becomes truly immersive,” he said.

As both Devanathan and Srinivas made clear, India’s digital landscape is entering a new chapter, one driven by speed, creativity, and intelligence. With the next generation of consumers redefining how content is created and consumed, Meta’s vision is not just to keep pace, but to help build the infrastructure of tomorrow’s digital culture.

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Why Sam Altman was fired: Microsoft CTO email reveals board failure

Published

4 days ago

February 7, 2026

indiantelevision.com Team

WASHINGTON: At OpenAI, the fight was not about artificial intelligence going rogue—it was about who got the GPUs.
An internal email from Microsoft chief technology officer Kevin Scott, sent on November 19, 2023, offers the clearest account yet of the events that culminated in the sudden firing of Sam Altman as OpenAI’s chief executive. Far from a single ideological rupture, Scott describes a combustible mix of resource wars, bruised egos and a board ill-equipped to manage the world’s hottest AI company.

According to the email, addressed to Microsoft chief executive Satya Nadella, president Brad Smith and other senior leaders, OpenAI co-founder Ilya Sutskever had been “increasingly at odds” with Altman on two fronts.

Read the full email below to find out:

[This document is from Musk v. Altman (2026).]

From: Kevin Scott

Sent: Sunday, November 19, 2023 7:31 AM

To: Frank X. Shaw, Satya Nadella, Brad Smith, Amy Hood, Caitlin McCabe

Frank,

I can help you with the timeline and with our best understanding of what was going on. I think the reality was that a member of the board, llya Sutskever, had been increasingly at odds with his boss, Sam, over a variety of issues.

One of those issues is that there is a perfectly natural tension inside of the company between Research and Applied over resource allocations. The success of Applied has meant that headcount and GPUs got allocated to things like the API and ChatGPT. Research, which is responsible for training new models, could always use more GPUs because what they’re doing is literally insatiable, and it’s easy for them to look at the success of Applied and believe that in a zero sum game they are responsible for them waiting for GPUs to become available to do their work. I could tell you stories like this from every place l’ve ever worked, and it boils down to, even if you have two important, super successful things you’re trying to work on simultaneously, folks rarely think about the global optima. They believe that their thing is more important, and that to the extent that things are zero sum, that the other thing is a cause of their woes. It’s why Sam has pushed us so hard on capacity: he’s the one thing about the global optima and trying to make things non-zero sum. The researchers at OAl do not appreciate that they would not have anywhere remotely as many GPUs as they do have if there were no Applied at all, and that Applied has a momentum all its own that must be fed. So the only reasonable thing to do is what Sam has been doing: figure out how to get more compute.

The second of the issues, and one that’s deeply personal to llya, is that Jakub moreso than Ilya has been making the research breakthroughs that are driving things forward, to the point that Sam promoted Jakub, and put him charge of the major model research directions. After he did that, Jakub’s work accelerated, and he’s made some truly stunning progress that has accelerated in the past few weeks. I think that Ilya has had a very, very hard time with this, with this person that used to work for him suddenly becoming the leader, and perhaps more importantly, for solving the problem that Ilya has been trying to solve the past few years with little or no progress. Sam made the right choice as CEO here by promoting Jakub.

Now, in a normal company, if you don’t like these two things, you’d appeal to your boss, and if he/she tells you that they’ve made their decision and that it’s final, your recourse is accept the decision or quit. Here, and this is the piece that everyone should have been thinking harder about, the employee was also a founder and board member, and the board constitution was such that they were highly susceptible to a pitch by Ilya that portrays the decisions that Sam was making as bad. I think the things that made them susceptible, is that two of the board members were effective altruism folks who all things equal would like to have an infinite bag of money to build AGI-like things, just to study and ponder, but not to do anything with. None of them were experienced enough with running things, or understood the dynamic at OAI well enough to understand that firing Sam not only would not solve any of the concerns they had, but would make them worse. And none of them had experience, and didn’t seek experience out, in how to handle something like a CEO transition, certainly not for the hottest company in the world.

The actual timeline of events through Friday afternoon as I understand them:

Thursday late night, the board let’s Mira know what they’re going to do. By board, it’s Ilya, Tash, Helen, and Adam.

Mira calls me and Satya about 10-15 minutes before the board talks to Sam. This is the first either of us had heard of any of this. Mira sounded like she had been run over by a truck as she tells me.

OAl Board notifies Sam at noon on Friday that he’s out, and that Greg is off the board, and immediately does a blog post.

OAl all hands at 2P to rattled staff.

Greg resigns. He was blindsided and hadn’t been in the board deliberations, and hadn’t agreed to stay.

Jakub and a whole horde of researchers reach out to Sam and Greg trying to understand what happened, expressing loyalty to them, and saying they will resign.

Friday night Jakub and a handful of others resign.

eNews

Loop AI raises $14m series A to boost restaurant delivery operations

Published

7 days ago

February 4, 2026

indiantelevision.com Team

CALIFORNIA: Loop AI has just served itself a sizeable helping of fresh capital. The enterprise AI company focused on the restaurant and retail back office has raised $14 million in a Series A round, led by fintech investor Nyca Partners, signalling growing confidence in the future of food delivery as a profit engine rather than a margin killer.

Alongside the funding, Osama Bedier, former executive at Google and GoDaddy and now an investment partner at Nyca, will take a seat on Loop AI’s board. His arrival adds heavyweight experience as the company enters its next phase of growth.

Loop AI operates where artificial intelligence meets operational grit. Its platform helps restaurants manage the often messy realities of delivery, from margins and workflows to customer behaviour, using what it calls agentic workflows to automate and optimise back-of-house decisions.

Bedier believes the timing could not be better. With restaurants under pressure to deliver better customer experiences while running leaner operations, AI is fast becoming a necessity rather than a nice-to-have. He praised founders Anand Tumuluru and Sundar for building technology he sees as essential to the future of dining.

The backdrop is a delivery market that is ballooning fast. In 2025, the US delivery sector is estimated at $140 billion, accounting for about 10 per cent of the market. By 2035, that figure is expected to swell to $1 trillion, with delivery claiming nearly a third of all restaurant sales. What was once an add-on is quickly becoming the main course.

For Loop AI, delivery is not just another channel, it is the new drive-through. As eating habits tilt ever further towards takeout and doorstep dining, the company’s mission is to help restaurants grow without watching profits evaporate along the way.

Customers appear to be buying into the pitch. California-based casual dining brand Lazy Dog credits Loop AI with helping power rapid growth in its delivery business, while fast-casual chain Starbird says the platform has turned third-party delivery from a necessary evil into a viable growth lever.

Since 2024, Loop AI has grown sixfold and now supports thousands of restaurants. The new funding will be used to expand its product offering and hire across its offices in New York, San Francisco, Tampa and Bangalore.

In an industry where delivery has long been blamed for thin margins and operational headaches, Loop AI is betting that smarter systems can finally make the maths work. For restaurant operators juggling kitchens, couriers and customers, that could be a recipe worth following.

eNews

Food for thought Feeding India serves 23 crore meals and counting

Published

2 weeks ago

January 29, 2026

indiantelevision.com Team

MUMBAI: Hunger may be stubborn, but Feeding India is proving it is not unbeatable. The not-for-profit has served more than 23 crore meals over the past seven years, turning nourishment into a nationwide movement that now spans over 150 cities, according to its Annual Report for FY 2024–25.

Titled A Year of Nourishing Dreams, the report captures a year in which the organisation sharpened its focus from simply filling plates to shaping futures. At the heart of its work is the fight against child malnutrition, with Feeding India now supporting over 1.4 lakh children every day through its partner network.

Its daily feeding programme has grown into a vast ecosystem, covering 1,097 partner schools and 726 Anganwadi centres. These include 275 formal schools, 720 informal learning centres, 58 schools for children with disabilities, and 32 orphan homes. Menus are tailored to local tastes, from rajma chawal in the North to idli sambhar in the South, ensuring meals are nutritious, culturally familiar and widely accepted. Food is provided through a mix of on-site kitchens and centralised cooking facilities.

Recognising that malnutrition often begins long before children enter classrooms, Feeding India has stepped deeper into early childhood care. Across districts such as Gurugram, Kushinagar and Varanasi, the organisation has worked with 726 Anganwadi centres, impacting around 27,000 children aged 0–6 years. More than 30 Anganwadis have been upgraded using Building as Learning Aid concepts, creating brighter, safer and more child-friendly spaces. In Varanasi, a pilot programme now provides full breakfast and lunch meals, a significant shift from the usual supplementary snacks.

The year also tested the organisation’s ability to respond in crisis. During 2024–25, Feeding India distributed nearly 2,000 ration kits following floods in Assam and landslides in Kerala, and served over 1.9 lakh hot meals after the Uttarakhand cloudburst. Relief operations extended to Bihar, Andhra Pradesh and Tamil Nadu in the wake of Cyclone Fengal.

Community participation remains central to the model. Events such as the Zomato Feeding India Concert, featuring Dua Lipa, brought together 28,000 people in 2024, while initiatives like Poshan Potli nutrition kits supported tuberculosis patients during recovery in Varanasi.

Funding patterns underline the power of platforms. Zomato users contributed nearly 80 per cent of total funds, amounting to Rs 74 crore, while Blinkit customers added 15 per cent, or Rs 14 crore. The remaining around 5 per cent came from institutional donors, employees and direct website contributions. Donors can track their impact directly via the Zomato or Blinkit apps, seeing how many meals they have funded and where those meals were served.

The report also highlights tangible outcomes. At the Malvi Educational and Charitable Trust in Gujarat, students recorded an average BMI improvement of 9.50 per cent after daily nutritious meals were introduced.

“Every meal represents hope, dignity and opportunity for a child who might otherwise go hungry,” a Feeding India spokesperson said, adding that the focus remains on nourishing potential through nutrition, infrastructure and care.

As the numbers grow, the message is simple but powerful, feeding a child today is an investment in tomorrow, and Feeding India is determined to keep that promise alive, one meal at a time.