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Mission 2014: The rise of the political campaign
While the two-horse race hasn’t disappointed so far, what with all the mudslinging, sloganeering, crowd-pleasing and promising, there seems to be not a marked difference between the election strategies of the main opponents.
The Congress Party has flagged off its Rs 500 crore advertising and publicity campaign to promote leading light Rahul Gandhi. With a slogan that reads ‘Har haath shakti, har haath tarakki’, the blitzkrieg mirrors the idea of power and progress to each and every person while focusing on the progress made by the nation in the past decade, albeit with the Congress at the helm of affairs. One of the ads even features a young, Muslim party member, Hasiba Amin, urging the youth to join RaGa along with the tagline ‘Kattar Soch Nahi, Yuva Josh’.
Apart from this, the ruling alliance has initiated a Rs 100 crore Bharat Nirman campaign, which is being handled by ad agency Percept and run from the Information and Broadcasting Ministry’s budget headed by Manish Tewari.
What’s more, recently, Times Now Editor-in-chief Arnab Goswami grilled the Gandhi scion in his first ever television interview since his political debut in 2004. RaGa answered questions including whether he is a reluctant politician and what are his views on the multiple scams facing UPA 2 but his answers elicited a mixed response where some found him frank and others felt he needed growing up, politically speaking.
Not far behind the Congress, the BJP is close to finalising the ad agency to kick-off its Rs 400 crore campaign around prime ministerial candidate Narendra Modi. It is learnt that McCann Worldgroup led by adman-lyricist Prasoon Joshi and WPP agency Contract Advertising are in the fray to grab the hotly-contested account.
This – after the recent furore over Congress’ initial campaign slogan “Main nahin, hum”, which the party claimed had been lifted from NaMo’s tagline during the 2011 Gujarat Chintan Shivir. So much so, the Congress was forced to drop the tagline even after AICC media head Ajay Maken refuted BJP’s allegations by tweeting a picture featuring the slogan at a mushaira of Congress workers in Indore in 2010.
So while the Congress and the BJP gear up for battle in the media space, it remains to be seen how much of this will translate into votes for their prime-ministerial hopefuls. Historically speaking, in 2004, the then ruling party, BJP, had run a similar campaign ‘India Shining’ highlighting all its good work but the aam junta wasn’t swayed. One of the main reasons for the failure of the campaign was people’s inability to relate to it.
Whether things will work out differently this time one can’t really say but it might do well for both parties to take a cue from AAP’s unique strategy.
Unlike its traditional parties, AAP has largely stuck to communicating through outdoor activation programs and social media while steering clear of mass media campaigns.
The rookie party won 28 out of 70 seats in the Delhi Assembly Elections and went on to form the government in the national capital sans any campaigning worth writing home about.
In establishing a door-to-door (person-to-person) connect with the common man in buses, trains, autos, juggis and bastis, the party’s volunteers stayed true to its one agenda – the aam aadmi.
As Delhi Chief Minister, Arvind Kejriwal’s recent dharna won him (and the party) more brickbats than bouquets as it is unheard for a constitutional head in a democracy to resort to such means. However, it helped AAP become the darling of the masses at no humungous cost, allegations of using the media to advantage notwithstanding.
Whether the junta will fall for the publicity and hype created by Congress and BJP or will give its nod to the AAP-brand of democracy, is highly debatable. Our only hope is let the best man (party) win!
MUMBAI: 2025 will be remembered as the year India’s OTT industry stopped chasing scale for its own sake and began reckoning with how audiences actually consume content. Completion rates fell, patience wore thin and the limits of long-form excess became impossible to ignore. In this guest column, Pratap Jain, founder and CEO of ChanaJor, traces how micro-drama moved from the fringes to the centre of viewing behaviour, why short-form fiction emerged as a retention engine rather than a trend, and how platforms that respected time, habit and emotional payoff were the ones that truly grew up in 2025.
If there is one thing 2025 will be remembered for in the Indian OTT industry, it’s this: the industry finally stopped pretending.
Stopped pretending that bigger automatically meant better.
Stopped pretending that viewers had endless time.
Stopped pretending that scale without retention was success.
What began as a quiet reset in 2023 and a cautious correction in 2024 turned into a very visible shift in 2025. Business models matured. Content strategies tightened. And most importantly, platforms started aligning themselves with how Indians actually watch content, not how the industry wished they would.
At the centre of this shift was micro-drama—not as a trend, but as a behavioural inevitability.
When OTT finally understood the time problem
For years, long episodes were treated as a marker of seriousness. A 45–60 minute runtime was almost a badge of credibility. Shorter formats were pushed to the margins, labelled as “snack content” or “mobile-only.”
That belief quietly collapsed in 2025.
What platform data showed very clearly was not a drop in interest—but a drop in patience. Viewers weren’t rejecting stories. They were rejecting commitment.
Across platforms, the same patterns appeared:
* First-episode drop-offs on long-form shows kept increasing
* Completion rates continued to slide
* Viewers were sampling more titles but finishing fewer
At the same time, shows with episodes in the six to 10 minute range started showing the opposite behaviour: higher completion, higher repeat viewing, and stronger daily habit formation.
Micro-drama didn’t win because it was short. It won because it respected time.
Micro-Drama didn’t arrive loudly. It took over quietly.
There was no single moment when micro-drama “launched” in India. It crept in through dashboards and retention charts.
By mid-2025, it was clear that viewers were happy watching four, five, sometimes six short episodes in one sitting—even when they wouldn’t finish a single long episode. Romance, relationship drama, slice-of-life conflict, and grounded comedy worked especially well.
This wasn’t disposable content. It was compressed storytelling.
In shorter formats, there was no room for indulgence. Every episode had to move the story forward. Weak writing was punished faster. Strong writing was rewarded immediately.
Micro-drama raised the bar instead of lowering it.
Where ChanaJor naturally fit into this shift
ChanaJor didn’t pivot to micro-drama in 2025 because the market demanded it. In many ways, the platform was already built around the same viewing behaviour.
From the beginning, ChanaJor focused on short-to-mid-length fictional stories that felt close to everyday Indian life—hostels, rented flats, office romances, small-town relationships, young people figuring things out. Stories that didn’t need heavy context or cinematic scale to connect.
What worked in ChanaJor’s favour in 2025 was clarity:
* A clearly defined audience
* Tight episode lengths
* Storytelling that prioritised emotion and pace over spectacle
While several platforms rushed to copy global micro-drama formats, ChanaJor stayed rooted in familiar Indian settings and conflicts. That familiarity mattered. Viewers didn’t have to “enter” the world of the show—it already felt like theirs.
Why audiences started responding differently
One of the biggest misconceptions going into 2025 was that audiences wanted shorter content because their attention spans had reduced. That wasn’t entirely true.
What viewers actually wanted was meaningful payoff per minute.
On platforms like ChanaJor, episodes didn’t waste time setting the mood for ten minutes. Conflicts arrived early. Characters were recognisable within moments. Emotional hooks landed fast.
A typical consumption pattern looked like real life:
* One episode during a break
* Two more before sleeping
* A few the next day
This is how viewing habits are built—not through marketing spends, but through comfort and consistency.
Viewers came back not because every show was a blockbuster, but because they knew what kind of experience to expect.
2025 was also the year OTT faced business reality
The other big change in 2025 was on the business side. Subscriber growth slowed. Discounts stopped hiding churn. Customer acquisition costs rose.
Platforms were forced to ask harder questions:
* Are viewers finishing what they start?
* Are they returning without reminders?
* Is this content worth what we’re spending on it?
This is where micro-drama began outperforming expectations. A well-written short series could deliver sustained engagement without massive budgets. It didn’t peak for one weekend and disappear—it stayed alive through repeat viewing.
Platforms like ChanaJor benefited because they weren’t chasing inflated launch numbers. The focus was on consistency and retention, not noise.
Failures Became Visible Faster
2025 also exposed weaknesses brutally.
Several platforms assumed micro-drama was a shortcut—short episodes, quick shoots, instant traction. What they discovered was that bad writing fails faster in short formats than in long ones.
Viewers dropped off within minutes. Episodes were abandoned mid-way. Weak stories had nowhere to hide.
Micro-drama didn’t forgive laziness. It amplified it.
The platforms that survived were the ones that treated short storytelling with the same seriousness as long-form—sometimes more.
OTT Stopped Chasing Prestige and Started Chasing Habit
Perhaps the most important shift in 2025 wasn’t technical or creative—it was psychological.
OTT stopped trying to look like cinema. It stopped chasing validation through scale and awards alone. It began behaving like what it actually is in people’s lives: a daily companion.
Platforms like ChanaJor found their space here because that mindset was already baked in. The goal wasn’t to dominate a weekend launch. It was to quietly become part of someone’s everyday viewing routine.
That shift changed everything—from release strategies to how success was measured.
What 2025 Ultimately Taught the Industry
By the end of the year, three truths were impossible to ignore:
* Time is the most valuable thing a viewer gives you
* Retention matters more than reach
* Format must follow behaviour, not ego
Micro-drama didn’t take over because it was fashionable. It took over because it fit real life.
Looking Ahead
Micro-drama is not replacing long-form storytelling. It is redefining the baseline of engagement.
Longer shows will survive—but only when they earn their length. Short-form fiction will continue to evolve, becoming sharper, more emotionally confident, and better written.
Platforms like ChanaJor have shown that it’s possible to grow without shouting—by understanding the audience, respecting their time, and telling stories that feel real.
2025 wasn’t the year OTT became smaller. It was the year it became smarter.
Note: The views expressed in this article are solely the author’s and do not necessarily reflect our own.
