Jan 31, 2026 9:25pm IST
Getting maximum eyeballs from microdramas
In the scramble for survival, the storytelling universe’s latest obsession is going ‘micro’. Microdramas, to the uninitiated, are short, vertical serialized video episodes with highly addictive cliffhangers, designed for mobile viewing. The content bomb called microdramas is going to detonate in 2026 across the Indian entertainment industry in multiple languages, genres and across multiple apps.
These shows, also known as “verticals” for their phone orientation, cater to mobile phone users first. India has over a billion mobile phone subscribers and over 740 million smartphone users (second largest smartphone market after China). This number is increasing as you read. Instead of focusing on any other number right now, let this number sink in. This is the potential of growth of the microdrama market. According to Redseer Strategy Consultants, the microdrama segment entered a decisive inflection phase in India, to reach nearly $260 million in annual recurring revenue.
Microdramas arrive with a bang!
The microdramas are here. Microdrama apps in India have crossed 250 million cumulative downloads. Behemoths like Jio Hotstar, Prime Video, ZEE, Netflix and Balaji Telefilms have separate divisions dedicated to microdramas, despite questions around potential monetisation, quality, sustainability, competition are still betting on these as the next big thing. Netflix has launched a new initiative to commission 70-minute featurettes. Jio Hotstar launched its Sparks programme in February 2025 - a dedicated initiative for innovative short-form content to spotlight India’s top digital creators. YouTube’s shorts program (launched in 2020 as a response to the ban on TikTok and in an attempt to compete with social media reels) has grown in 2025 as the single most significant views magnet for the platform. Meta and Instagram are not far behind with microdrama series built in the reels format.
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Expanding beyond China
Microdramas began around 2018 in China, and went nuclear by 2022. What was initially brushed aside as a ‘China thing’ is now a near $7 billion industry. India took notice of microdramas only in early 2024 when they became huge in America. Fast-paced, cliffhanger-driven series that are a total of about 50 minutes long, split up into one to three-minute episodes, made at slim budgets and produced in heavy volumes to keep them economical. This is what is being called bite-sized snackable content. Low commitment, high on entertainment and on-the-go watching material. A quick look at an app called Candyjar TV reveals microdramas on offer are largely salacious, low-brow, very basic, fast-paced, fantastically aspirational and designed for ‘ambient’ viewing.
Azim Lalani, co-founder and Chief Business Officer, Bullet shares, “All numbers are in speculation right now. We are at the category creation stage. We are taking it slow. We are learning, collecting, collating data at the backend from across India through our widespread network. Apart from creating new material, we are also dipping into our vast library to find what fits this kind of format and re-editing that material to re-release it in this format. We are in the test phase. But whichever way this piece sits, one thing is certain that microdramas are here to stay.” ZEE launched its microdrama app Bullet TV in July 2025. There are 60 original series in seven languages streaming on the app right now.
Cracking the code
Amazon MX Player went LIVE with MX FATAFAT in October 2025. They have not launched officially but the service is available to customers and the team is using it to collect deep data on viewing patterns. There are about 200 original microdramas in Hindi language available to watch.
“We will follow this cadence of creation into 2026. But our expansion plans into languages other than Hindi will depend on the performance evaluation of our Hindi content. It is a steep learning curve for us in terms of efficiency, budgets and the writing. But cracking the writing is the bigger challenge. A different muscle comes into play to creating for this stream. The secret sauce in writing for microdramas is suspension of disbelief. The writing will decide the diversity and sustainability which are essential to retaining the viewer,” reveals Amogh Dusad, Director and Head of Content, Amazon MX Player.
Exponential growth in the future?
Over the past five years, the rise of Instagram reels and YouTube Shorts has paved the way for microdrama content in India. Samar Khan (CEO, Juggernaut Productions and COO, Docubay and Epic ON) is sitting on 20 ready-to-air microdramas in three languages (Hindi, Tamil and Telugu). His plan is to take this number from 20 to 150 in 2026. Samar reiterates the cautionary mood in the market, saying, “The big players have still not aggressively entered the game. YouTube has not stepped in. Once it does, we don’t know what will happen. Everyone is waiting for the market to settle down and for data collection on what works in this space for the Indian market. Currently, people in India are looking at China and the US for stories. Which is working to a certain extent, but the real gamechanger will be creating content specifically for India backed by data. Next year, this segment will explode.”
If the big players commissioning content are cautiously confident, the independent producers making the series have a different story to tell. Prakriti Mukherjee, Founder BingeBug Entertainment, has made five Hindi microdramas and the ones she is making in other languages are on the floors at the moment. None of these have released right now. A seasoned industry professional and one of the early producers of microdramas, Prakriti has genuine concerns about the price point of the projects. “We started strong with the budget of about ₹1 lakh per episode. This allowed us to maintain quality of writing, production and talent. But the players from the adult industry entering this space to legitimize themselves have crashed prices from ₹1 lakh an episode to ₹15,000 an episode. This is an untenable price point that no serious producer can match. The moment you prioritize money over content, the decline begins. We might be going in a very different direction even before we have begun.”
Creator and entrepreneur Kusha Kapila views microdramas as an investment in self. She recently co-produced a short film she acted in called Vyarth by Pankaj Dayani. It is now streaming on YouTube. She is producing a microdrama for her company, partly funded by her talent agency. The eight-part series will release next year. She reveals, “The issue with microdramas is that the payment is also ‘micro’. It is easier for creators like me to do this on our own than get commissioned because we can get brands on board and work at a better price point with better quality. We also know how to do seamless brand integrations. My friend and creator Dolly Singh has pioneered microdramas in India with her series, Best Worst Date that released in May 2024 before everyone woke up to microdramas. More than even creators, brands will really double down heavily on microdramas.”
Making hay while the sun shines
Other than giant corporates, independent creators and producers, there are smaller microdrama apps mushrooming rapidly. Currently, there are only 15-20 apps (Pocket FM, Kuku TV, Chai Shots, DramaBox, Dashverse) that are notable but this number will considerably increase in 2026.
Almost on cue, Harman Baweja and Vicky Bahri’s (Producers and business partners) microdrama app KLIP had a soft launch on December 16, 2025. They have sunk close to half a million dollars of their own money on their app. They are clocking a budget of ₹28 lakhs for 40 episodes and working with established talent like Dipannita Sharma, Kunal Kapoor, Rohit Roy and Chintan Gandhi. They want to raise outside funds for the app but only three months after it has been wheeled out into the market. For Vicky Bahri, microdramas was an opportunity hiding in plain sight. “I knew there is more to microdramas than voyeurism. The two things we attacked at the start were the writing and tech. These took us months to figure. Once we did, we dove in.”
Strength in numbers
The price point and monetization are a big concern for this segment which many hope that brand collaborations and smooth integrations can solve to some extent. However, experts feel that awareness is a larger concern in these early days of category creation than budgets. Azim Lalani talks about how the genre is more popular in India’s smaller towns and villages. “The urban audience has not joined the party as yet. We are serving the tier two-three markets right now. They care about aspirational content. A CEO’s daughter is in love with a autorickshaw driver, the house help wins a lottery of ₹700 crores — these kind of fantasy scenarios excite them. The volumes in viewership come from these markets. This is a leaf out of the playbook of early days of OTTs in India.”
Opines Vicky Bahri, “The beauty of microdramas is that competition is good. Slop is also being welcomed. The more the players, the better the awareness. There is no structure right now. We are building and learning as we go along. But once we get that critical mass attention, we will need quality stories and talent. Better content will not only draw more eyeballs but also retain viewers. Drivel eventually will not work.”
First-time creators
Its price sensitivity might raise alarms about quality but this has made microdramas a hotbed to launch new talent. Talent that needs a dedicated space for visibility and to breakout. The American microdrama Keily catapulted actor David Kopriva to fame, leading to bigger things. That could become the story of a lot of young aspirants.
Amogh Dusad tells us, “70 to 80 percent of the talent we are working with are first time creators. We are launching new talent and also mixing it up with creators that are more established like Shraddha Pasi, Amit Khan, Riya Kulkarni and Abhijit Das. We are also going to bring in unscripted into the mix soon which would be very exciting to test in this format.”
“We are crowdsourcing creators and giving them tools to create the best content. Mathematics clubbed with creativity is a winning combination we are betting on,” Lalani shares with excitement.
Subscription is key factor
Apart from production budgets, the cost (price) and model (ease) of subscription will play a key role. Dusad feels that just like the content, the subscription model and its pricing will come to sit at the most desirable spot after a period of time. He says, “The playbook for the best subscription model for microdrama is still being written. This is something we are working on and we will refine this as we go along.”
The pipeline for microdramas is being robustly built. This is an evolving, developing space. It is keeping shooting floors, equipment and professionals booked. In this economy, this is vital. We are at an inflection point. A time of great unrest. This is precisely why it is time to take those leaps of faith that stability often blunts with comfort. The old playbooks don’t work anymore because we are writing a completely different story for the way we create, consume and monetize. This applies to everything and not just microdramas. In this new world, you get to decide your place in the creative ecosystem.
The genre presents an exciting new commercial and creative opportunity. It’s also the fastest-growing space in India’s digital entertainment industry, with the market expected to touch $1 billion by 2030. This is in response to the way the world has begun to consume stories. Whether you like the format or not, one thing is certain that in this precarious environment, microdramas are here to stay.
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