iWorld
Netflix a damp squib; broadcasters long term gainers: Edelweiss
MUMBAI: While the world is going gaga over Netflix’s simultaneous launch in 130 countries across the globe including India, financial services company Edelweiss is not too impressed, at least in the medium term.
So when all and sundry are trying to predict and second guess the impact Netflix’s launch will have on the over-the-top (OTT) scene as well as on the broadcast industry in India, according to Edelweiss, the impact of Netflix in India will be limited on direct to home (DTH) and cable TV players over the medium term.
Citing the reasons for the same, Edelweiss lists:
1) Netflix does not have local content
2) Free content is easily available on Erosnow, Hotstar, YouTube
3) Steep pricing at 2-3x prevailing cable TV/DTH rates
4) Broadband speed beyond top cities will be a huge challenge
5) Lack of India cricket matches
The Indian pay TV market is on its way to embrace OTT platforms, especially for sports content, following increasing usage of internet. According to the company, this will be an additional source of revenue for broadcasters like Zee, Sun TV and TV18 over the longer term. “However, most broadcasters already have their OTT platforms and are yet to sign content deals with Netflix,” the company said in its report.
A successful OTT in US:
Netflix is a successful OTT in US as cable TV ARPU is $60 per month versus Netflix’s ARPU of $20-24. Secondly, the US has higher broadband penetration (~80 per cent) with good speed; and original content is dished out by Netflix. However, in India, Netflix currently lacks these advantages.
“Hence, we do not expect Netflix to have any major impact on Indian DTH/cable TV players over medium term. Netflix has a long way to go before tasting success in India,” Edelweiss said.
Pricing, slow broadband key challenges in India:
As was reported earlier by Indiantelevision.com, in India, Netflix’s subscription rates are Rs 500, Rs 650 and Rs 800 for basic, standard and premium packs respectively. “These are 2-3x the prevailing cable TV/DTH rates. Besides, broadband will entail additional costs,” the report added.
Internationally, Netflix has done well riding attractive pricing, which is almost half the cable TV/DTH rates, and original content. While the company currently does not enjoy these benefits in India, in a bid to attract subscribers, it is offering free services in its first month of operations.
According to Edelweiss, plans are also afoot to facilitate streaming via laptops, TV, smart phones and tablets. “However, we believe in India where subscribers pay ~Rs250-450 per month for cable TV (includes sports channels), Netflix’s rates are on the higher side. Broadband speed will also be a challenge. Netflix requires minimum speed of 512kbps and recommends 3mbps speed for SD content and 5mbps for HD videos, which further limits its expansion plans,” the report said.
Sports missing, India savours diverse content:
Netflix is currently beaming international TV shows in India along with English and Hindi movies. “The company is currently not offering local content. Sports content, the main driver of the OTT platform, is also not offered. With India being a country with diverse culture it consumes content in eight different languages. Currently, Netflix is beaming only English content which will attract only niche audience,” the report added.
With Netflix’s subscription price being by far the steepest in India as compared to competition, some of whom even offer content for free on their platform, it remains to be seen whether other players up their price, match Netflix’s or continue to offer content at a lower price. That said, with growing competition in the space from the likes of Arré, ALT Digital, DittoTV, ErosNow, HOOQ, Hotstar, Netflix, nexGTV, Sony Liv, Spuul, Voot and YuppTV, Netflix’s content strategy in the near future will be the key differentiator, which will separate the best from the rest.
eNews
How short, addictive story videos quietly colonised the Indian smartphone
A landmark Meta-Ormax study of 2,000 viewers reveals a format that is growing fast, paying slowly and consumed almost entirely in secret
CALIFORNIA, MUMBAI: India has a new entertainment habit, and it arrived without anyone really noticing. Micro dramas, those short, cliffhanger-driven episodic stories built for the smartphone screen, have quietly embedded themselves into the daily routines of millions of Indians, discovered not by design but by algorithmic accident, watched not in living rooms but in bedrooms, on commutes and in the five minutes before sleep.
That, in essence, is the finding of a sweeping new audience study released by Meta and media insights firm Ormax Media at Meta’s inaugural Marketing Summit: Micro-Drama Edition. Titled “Micro Dramas: The India Story” and based on 2,000 personal interviews and 50 depth interviews conducted between November 2025 and January 2026 across 14 states, it is the most comprehensive study of the category in India to date, and its findings are striking.
Sixty-five per cent of viewers discovered micro dramas within the last year. Of those, 89 per cent stumbled upon the format through social media feeds, primarily Instagram and Facebook, without ever searching for it. The algorithm did the heavy lifting. Discovery, as the report puts it bluntly, is algorithm-led, not intent-led.
The typical viewer journey begins with accidental exposure while scrolling, moves through a cliffhanger-driven incompletion hook that makes stopping feel unfinished, and is reinforced by algorithmic repetition until habitual consumption sets in. Only then, when a platform asks for an app download or a payment, does the viewer pause. Trust, not content quality, determines what happens next, and many simply return to the free feed rather than pay. It is a funnel with a wide mouth and a narrow neck.
The numbers on consumption tell their own story. Viewers spend a median of 3.5 hours per week watching micro dramas, spread across seven to eight sessions of roughly 30 minutes each, peaking sharply between 8pm and midnight. Daytime viewing is snackable and low-commitment, squeezed into morning commutes, work breaks and coffee pauses. Night-time is where the format truly lives: private, uninterrupted and, for many viewers, socially invisible. Ninety per cent watch alone, compared to just 43 per cent for long-form OTT content. Half the audience watches during their commute, well above the 37 per cent figure for streaming platforms, a direct reflection of the format’s low time investment advantage.
The audience itself breaks into three segments. Incidental viewers, comprising 39 per cent of the total, are passive consumers who stumble in and rarely seek content actively. Intent-building viewers, the largest group at 43 per cent, are beginning to form habits and seek out episodes but remain cautious. High-intent viewers, just 18 per cent, are the ones who download apps, tolerate ads and occasionally pay: skewing male, younger and urban.
What audiences want from the content is revealing. The top three genres are romance at 72 per cent, family drama at 64 per cent and comedy at 63 per cent, precisely the same top three as Hindi general entertainment television. The format rewards emotional familiarity over complexity. Romance in particular thrives because it demands low cognitive investment, needs no elaborate world-building and plays naturally into the private, pre-sleep viewing window where inhibitions lower and emotional intimacy feels safe.
The most-recalled shows, led by Kuku TV titles such as The Lady Boss Returns, The Billionaire Husband and Kiss My Luck, share a common narrative DNA: rich-poor conflict, hidden identities, power imbalances, melodrama and cliffhangers that make stopping feel physically uncomfortable. Predictability, the research warns, is fatal. Each episode must re-earn attention from scratch.
The terminology question is telling. Despite the industry’s embrace of the phrase “micro drama,” viewers have not adopted it. They call the content “short story videos,” “short dramas,” “reels with stories” or simply “serials.” One respondent from Chennai said bluntly that “micro sounds like a scientific word.” The category is at the stage that OTT occupied in 2019 and podcasts in the same year: widely consumed, poorly named and not yet crystallised in the public imagination.
Platform awareness remains alarmingly thin. Only three platforms, Kuku TV at 78 per cent, Story TV at 46 per cent and Quick TV at 28 per cent, have crossed the 20 per cent awareness threshold. The rest languish in single digits. This creates a trust deficit that directly throttles monetisation: viewers who cannot remember which app they used are hardly primed to enter their payment details.
Yet the appetite is clearly there. Sixty-five per cent of viewers watch only Indian content, drawn by the TV-serial familiarity of the storytelling, the comfort of Hindi as a shared language and the sight of actors they half-recognise from decades of television. South languages are rising fast: Tamil, Telugu and Kannada together account for 24 per cent of first-choice viewing. And AI-generated content, still a novelty, has landed better than expected: 47 per cent of viewers call it creative and unique, with only 6 per cent actively rejecting it.
Shweta Bajpai, director, media and entertainment (India) at Meta, called micro drama “a category that is rewriting the rules of Indian entertainment,” adding that the discovery engine being social distinguishes this wave from previous content formats. Shailesh Kapoor, founder and chief executive of Ormax Media, was characteristically measured: the format, he said, is showing “the early signs of becoming a distinct content category” and, given how closely it aligns with natural mobile behaviour, “has the potential to scale very quickly.”
The format’s fundamental mechanics are working. It enters lives quietly, through boredom and a scrolling thumb, and burrows in through incompletion and habit. The challenge now is monetisation: converting a category of highly engaged but deeply anonymous viewers into paying customers who trust the platform enough to hand over their UPI credentials. The story, as any micro-drama writer knows, is only as good as the next cliffhanger. India’s platforms had better have one ready.
