Meta layoffs hit India; Local VCs eye Wispr Flow funding

Happy Wednesday! Tech major Meta has quietly axed a dozen India roles as part of its latest global AI-era reset. This and more in today's ETtech Morning Dispatch.

Also in the letter:
■ AI hollows out India's GCC
■ Hyderabad startup's e-aircraft prototype
■ FirstCry's Q4 report

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Meta has laid off roughly a dozen employees across functions in India as part of its latest global shake-up, delivering the news via a cold, early-morning email, multiple people told us.

Driving the news: Ad sales, marketing and several individual contributor roles have been hit at Meta's India office, which employs about 400 people.

One executive said the India cuts follow the global playbook: employees woke up to impersonal emails and offers of four to six months' severance, with no prior conversations or warnings.

Part of global layoffs: Meta is in the middle of a sweeping restructuring, slashing about 8,000 jobs—roughly 10% of its global workforce—and informing staff at 4 am by email. Around 7,000 employees are being redeployed to new AI-focused projects, while layers of middle management are being stripped out.

Also Read: Meta begins 8,000 global job cuts in Asian hub of Singapore

High capex, hard cuts: All this comes even as Meta sharply ramps up AI spending. At its March-quarter earnings call, the company raised its 2026 capex guidance to $125–145 billion—an eye-popping ~87% year-on-year jump.

Also Read: Meta layoffs 2026: More cuts possible after 10% workforce reduction on May 20

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Tanay Kothari, CEO, Wispr Flow

Peak XV Partners and Aakrit Vaish's AI-focused fund, Activate, are in talks to invest in Wispr Flow's new funding round, which is expected to value the San Francisco-based voice dictation startup at $2 billion.

If completed, the deal would mark another US AI bet for Peak XV and another voice AI investment for Activate, following ElevenLabs.

Deal details:

• Peak XV is discussing an investment of about $15 million in a round that could top $250 million.
• Activate is expected to invest $3–5 million via a special purpose vehicle (SPV), the same structure it used for its ElevenLabs bet.
• Activate will also act as Wispr Flow's on-the-ground venture partner, helping it deepen enterprise relationships and distribution.

India opportunity:

• India is already Wispr Flow's second-largest market by users and paying subscribers, cofounder Tanay Kothari told us in March.
• It is also the company's fastest-growing market, with both users and revenue compounding about 60% month on month.
• India contributes roughly 10% of Wispr Flow's revenue today and could become its largest market within two years if current trends hold.

Also Read: Wispr Flow launches in India; offers Hinglish and Android app support

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Even as global capability centres (GCCs) multiply in India and outpace traditional IT firms in hiring, a new phenomenon is emerging: portfolio hollowing.

What's happening: AI is squeezing out repetitive, rules-based work across customer support, finance, human resources, analytics and software operations, even as headline headcount at GCCs continues to rise, experts told us.

They added that AI is stripping away junior-level workflows, collapsing standalone procedural roles, and forcing multinationals to redesign what their India centres actually do.

Where is it happening: The impact is sharpest in finance and HR, where AI is already deeply embedded in day-to-day operations.

• Invoice processing time has plunged from seven days to one, and financial closing from 12 days to five, while staffing needs in these areas have dropped by roughly 75%.
• In HR, 70-80% of routine queries are now resolved without human intervention.
• In software development, productivity per engineer has jumped an estimated 40-80%.

Also Read: Smaller teams, fewer replacements guiding GCC 2.0 ops playbook

Yes, and: Early estimates suggest nearly 18% of India's GCC work still sits in commoditised, process-heavy functions that are steadily being automated, woven into AI-first workflows or rebuilt entirely by AI-native firms, signalling a structural shift in the country's largest white-collar employment engine.

Also Read: ET Graphics: Hiring slows as money flows to build AI infra

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Hyderabad's BluJ rolls out e-aircraft prototype: Deep-tech aviation startup BluJ Aerospace on Tuesday unveiled the second-generation prototype of its heavy-payload electric vertical take-off and landing (eVTOL) aircraft. The Hyderabad-based company aims to develop cargo and industrial logistics use cases ahead of commercial deployment targeted for 2027.

FirstCry's Q4 report: Brainbees Solutions, the parent of the mother-and-baby care products retailer FirstCry, reported 12% year-on-year (YoY) growth in operating revenues, at Rs 2,162 crore, in Q4 FY26.

Nilekani's Fundamentum bets big on frontier tech: Fundamentum Partnership, the venture capital firm cofounded by entrepreneurs Nandan Nilekani and Ashish Kumar, has launched an investment platform, F2A (Fundamentum Frontier Advisors), with Rs 3,000 crore to invest in AI and deeptech startups.

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■ AI tools lead to ‘clear racial disparities’ in job hiring (FT)

■ Why “good enough” AI isn't enough to survive the new economy (Rest of World)

■ A reality check on the AI jobs hysteria (MIT Technology Review)