This report is from this week’s CNBC’s “Inside India” newsletter which brings you timely, insightful news and market commentary on the emerging powerhouse. Subscribe here.
The big story
Recent friendly overtures aside, India does not always see eye to eye with China. But when it comes to the battle for eyeballs, the country’s entertainment industry has taken a leaf out of the Chinese playbook.
Micro-dramas, or 90 seconds to two-minute videos, loaded with hooks and wild plots, surpassed box office collections in China last year, building a near $7 billion industry, and the Chinese trend has made its way into India.
This won’t be the first time a Chinese content format has gained traction in its neighboring country.
ByteDance’s TikTok had seen soaring popularity in India, with millions in the country hooked to its short-video format, before the app was banned in 2020. Within weeks of the ban, Meta’s Instagram launched Reels in India and is now a leading platform for user-generated, short-format content in the country.
As popular Chinese apps are still banned in India, streaming platforms, local production houses and short-video apps backed by private equity and venture capital firms view micro dramas as the next wave of content that drives user engagement.
They are pulling up their socks and investing in building bite-sized serialized content libraries, not to be left behind in the race to master this new video format.
Television crew working in a studio
Dpmike | E+ | Getty Images
Take Bengaluru-based ShareChat, whose founders launched short-video platform Moj for regional content after TikTok was banned. Between ShareChat and Moj they have 200 million-plus users, Manohar Charan, co-founder and chief financial officer at ShareChat, told CNBC. Instagram had over 480 million Indian users as of October 2025, according to Statista.
Five months ago, ShareChat doubled down on the micro-drama space and launched QuickTV. Unlike Moj, which offers user-generated content and ad-supported micro-dramas, QuickTV publishes videos from professional production houses and comes with a subscription model.
“We have 40 million users watching micro-drama content per month,” Charan told CNBC.
Indian micro-dramas are estimated to be the fastest-growing segment in the country’s $2.4 billion gaming and interactive media sector, according to a report by market research company Redseer and venture capital firm Bitkraft. The sector is expected to grow to $7.8 billion by 2030, with the nascent micro-drama space estimated to become a billion-dollar industry over the next five years.
“This format [micro-dramas] is designed for today’s fast-scrolling, snackable moments, while unlocking opportunities for a new wave of creators across India’s vibrant creative ecosystem,” Amogh Dusad, director and head of content at Amazon MX Player, said in a post on LinkedIn earlier this year.
To capitalize on the micro-drama opportunity, over the past six months, Amazon MX has launched Fatafat, Indian legacy media Zee Entertainment has invested in Bullet app, streaming platform Hoichoi has rolled out Sooper. There are also PE- and VC-funded apps such as Kuku TV and Story TV, all competing for eyeballs and wallet share.
Fueled by smartphones
India’s huge smartphone user base has helped catalyze the micro-drama growth in the country.
There are around 750 million to 800 million smartphone users in India, second only to China, Navkendar Singh, associate vice president at International Data Corporation, told CNBC’s “Inside India” on Tuesday.
“Television has become a secondary screen in India while phones are the primary screen for most,” said former television writer Sambbhav Khetarpal, also content head at micro-drama platform Sooper.
He says the change has been in the making for a few years as people increasingly consume content on smartphones rather than TVs.
The earliest micro-dramas in India — discounting user-generated content — started with the dubbing of Chinese shows in local languages around a year ago, which then progressed to Indian adaptation of those storylines.
“The copy content from Chinese drama is just initial teething problems of the industry,” said Anuj Tandon, partner at Bitkraft — an investor in KukuTV.
Though even generic plots are resulting in subscriptions and app downloads, mostly from small towns in India, experts said with the flow of fresh investments and rising competition, platforms and production houses are looking for differentiated content.
It would become “hard to sustain a platform with copycat content,” Khetarpal told CNBC, only “good tech and good content will survive.”
There must be a hook every minute or the audience “will just scroll away,” said television actor-turned-micro-drama producer Karanvir Bohra.
The money question
Currently, most Indian micro-drama platforms are earning from subscriptions, and that is positive change from the earlier “cash burn models of content platforms,” said Siddharth Jhawar, general manager India at adtech firm Moloco.
However, once the user base of these apps touches 10 million to 15 million, they will have to consider a mix of ad revenues as subscriptions will plateau, he added. Some in the industry, such as QuickTV’s Charan, say that advertising is a better route to make shows accessible to a wider audience.
About 70%-80% of the subscription revenue goes toward marketing the content on Instagram and Facebook for user acquisition, the rest gets split between the production and the distribution platform.
By owning a library of titles, a platform can keep the user engaged for longer on a micro-drama platforms, much like how Instagram does with user-generator content, experts said, allowing it to boost earnings through ads.
A short-video platform with high-content volume works well for advertisements, said Jhawar of Moloco, adding that the strategy has helped TikTok and Reels do well in terms of advertisements.
“It is easier to put ads after every 3-4 videos, than it is to put ads in the middle of long form content,” he said.
To draw audience away from Instagram’s user-generated content, micro-dramas will need more content volumes. A possible threat that is not lost on Meta, which in September launched its own micro-drama series titled “Party for Two.” The series aims to “inspire Gen Z to take creative risks,” Meta said in a statement.
Given these shows are being produced for less than $3,000 per series and a large talent base — Bollywood, TV, streaming platforms — India could see an explosion of content, experts said.
“There will be a content production boom in this space for the 3-4 years,” said Anurag Shukla, who has written a couple of micro-dramas in recent months.
Predictions aside, I am waiting for my Chinese friends to recommend a show in Mandarin that turns out to be a copy of an Indian micro-drama. Seems like a good benchmark to gauge Indian platforms’ performance in this sector?
Top TV picks on CNBC
Navkendar Singh, associate vice president of IDC India, expects Apple’s India sales to grow by another 10% to 15% annually over the next four to five years.
Ravi Jakhar, group chief financial officer at Allcargo Group, said that global trade has been “extremely muted” following U.S. tariffs, despite this typically being a strong season.
Pranjul Bhandari, chief India economist and strategist, at HSBC, said the firm expects India’s GDP to grow around 7%-7.5% over the next two quarters.
Need to know
Goods trade deficit in October shatters records. India’s goods trade deficit hit an all-time high of $41.7 billion in October as gold imports surged on festive season demand, while exports to U.S. bore the brunt of steep tariffs.
India deepens energy trade with U.S. The country is ramping up its energy imports from the U.S. in a bid to reduce its trade surplus with Washington — a key demand of the Trump administration during trade negotiations with New Delhi.
Capital market industry seeks overhaul in taxes. The industry has put forward a case for a comprehensive tax overhaul as Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman met market representatives in New Delhi for discussions before the union budget.
Quote of the week
I am optimistic that some kind of a deal will be reached between India and the U.S. … India clearly would like for its labor intensive exports, and even otherwise, to be in the broad band of its ASEAN peers.
— Suman Bery, vice president, NITI Aayog
In the markets
The Nifty 50 and the BSE Sensex were both up about 0.5% on Thursday, with their respective gains so far this year at 11% and nearly 10%.
The benchmark 10-year Indian government bond yield ticked slightly higher and was last at 6.543%.
— Nur Hikmah Md Ali
Coming up
Nov. 21: HSBC flash PMI for November; Sudeep Pharma IPO
Nov. 21-23: PM Narendra Modi to attend G20 summit in South Africa
Each weekday, CNBC’s “Inside India” news show gives you news and market commentary on the emerging powerhouse businesses, and the people behind its rise. Livestream the show on YouTube and catch highlights here.
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