India cracked the code on microdramas. It also cracked the timer

**Rachel Varghese** (0:02)
In China's Zhengzhou city, more than 50 film sets crowd a single 10,000 square feet stretch. Each set has, on average, about 200 square feet of space, which is much smaller than a standard studio apartment. Still, they are all distinct from each other. If one looks like a ballroom, the other looks like the inside of a cafe. There's probably another one that looks like a hospital room or the inside of an airplane. And even if you've never seen a Chinese drama before in your life, the kind of scenes that are shot on these sets might still sound familiar.
An older woman raises her hand to hit a young girl. A woman chucks a glass of water across a dining table at a young man. Someone peeks through a door and their eyes widen in shock. Cut to black. Before the slap, or even the water lands, before you can see what's on the other side of the door, the video ends. And a pop-up asks you to download the app to watch the rest. It's likely that the app has a short and snappy name, usually with a TV tacked on at the end. Kuku TV, Story TV, Quick TV, Tadka, Fatahfat. These are all Indian platforms by the way. And they are importing this format that first grew up in China, which is about 60 to 90 second long episodes, always ending with a cliffhanger or twist, and packaging it with the traditional Indian masala. So far, they have been quite successful. In fact, a survey released in India just last week showed that 80% of respondents had a preference for this format. And if you're wondering why they are popping up with increased frequency on your social media feeds, it's because the timing could not be better for video platforms like KukuTV and OTTs like JioHotstar. Even brands are seeing an opportunity for innovative storytelling through this format. Did you know, for example, that Haldiram's has produced its own micro drama?
You see, Indians are now more on their phone than ever. At the same time, AI is shortening production timelines, reducing costs and enabling real time data based insights. This kind of opportunity to scale both content and capture attention has never existed before. The roadmap is China, but the country's industry has had nearly eight years to mature, with it seeing investments from the government and very enthusiastic brand participation. Only now is it showing early signs of content saturation and quality degradation, especially as AI increasingly becomes an integral part of production. India's ecosystem, on the other hand, is still young. Its biggest players are relying heavily on AI already, and experts believe it runs the risk of hitting saturation in just a year, instead of eight. So why is everyone, including brands, rushing into this space?
Welcome to Daybreak, a business podcast from The Ken. I'm your host, Rachel Varghese, and every day of the week, my co-host, Snigdha Sharma and I will bring you one new story that is worth understanding and worth your time. Today is Wednesday, the 19th of August.
1.2 trillion hours.
That's how much time Indians spent on their phones last year, according to Fikki Iwai's latest report on media and entertainment.
And 60% of those hours were also spent on media and entertainment. That by the way, adds up to 720 billion hours, which is roughly equivalent to 82 million years. And that is more time than human beings as a species have even existed. Crazy as that number sounds, it is only going to tick up. Another recent report from Ericsson Mobility projects that Indians will be consuming 50 GB of data every month on an average by next year.
That's the opportunity platforms like JioHotstar's Tadka, Amazon's FataFat, KukuTV and StoryTV are after. And for a nation that has always loved its melodramatic soap operas and cheesy Bollywood, this format is the perfect bait. Now those same tropes and the drama of it all are available in snackable sizes. They combine the addictive quality of reels and shorts, which we're all well aware of, with the very human psychological itch of needing to know what happens next.
Sora Pandey, the CEO of StoryTV, explained in a report that the bet is to bring the same old school content to the swipe of a user's fingertips. The idea is to retain the emotions, the twists and the cliffhangers, but package them differently, and make them to fit the scrolling habits of phone users today.
While the different OTTs and streaming incumbents fight for the appointed viewing times, micro dramas fit neatly into the movements between. Think commute times or try breaks. In fact, the smaller platforms like Story and Kuku, admit that they're not necessarily even trying to compete with OTTs. They frame their content as a complementary viewing experience instead. Their aim is to own the time that people spend when their attention drifts from the screen and they start scrolling on their phone. As for the OTTs that have more recently stepped into the micro drama ring, the content works more as a funnel for platform subscriptions and catalog discovery. That's what my colleague Debanjali Biswas wrote for a piece earlier this year. She wrote that, as the OTT ecosystem matured, money started to come mostly from ads, not content. A producer who used to work with Jio Studios and Warner Bros, told her that micro dramas fit perfectly into the system because they're faster and cheaper to make, rake in watch time and redirect more eyeballs to ads. That's why Tadka is bundled with JioHotstar's existing offerings instead of being a separate platform.