iWorld
Khul Ke’s roundtable series celebrates Padma awardees’ triumphs
Mumbai: Khul Ke, the dynamic, homegrown India-centric social networking platform designed for open and unrestricted dialogue, is proud to announce the commencement of its groundbreaking series, Khul Ke Baat: Padma Awardees Ke Saath. This exclusive series, hosted by the renowned journalist and TV anchor Richa Aniruddha, aims to celebrate the remarkable contributions of individuals who have received the prestigious Padma Awards, one of India’s highest civilian honours.
In a world where celebrity culture often overshadows selfless service, Khul Ke Baat: Padma Awardees Ke Saath offers a refreshing perspective. The show dives deep into the lives of ordinary Indians who have made an indelible mark on society through their altruistic endeavours. These are individuals who have selflessly contributed to the betterment of their communities, demonstrating unwavering courage and dedication.
The series gives an insight into the lives of the Padma Awardees who open up to host Richa Aniruddha, sharing their inspiring life journeys, the challenges they’ve overcome, and the profound impact they’ve made through their noble service. The show, which serves as Khul Ke’s flagship RoundTable series, offers viewers an opportunity to witness the transformational power of social service and seeks to inspire the youth to follow in their footsteps.
https://www.khulke.com/roundtable/all
In the upcoming episodes of ‘Khul Ke Baat: Padma Awardees Ke Saath,’ the viewers will be introduced to a remarkable lineup of Padma Shri awardees who have made significant contributions to society. Episode one showcases Prakash Kaur, the founder of Unique Home in Punjab, who has provided a safe haven for orphaned girls, earning the Padma Shri in 2021 for her remarkable contributions. In Episode two, the viewers meet Karimul Haque, affectionately known as ‘Bike-Ambulance Dada,’ who has saved over 5000 lives in Jalpaiguri by transforming his bike into an ambulance, ensuring timely medical attention for those in need. Episode three sheds light on Usha Chaumar, the President of Sulabh International Social Service Organization, who transformed her life by leaving manual scavenging behind to champion social change, receiving the Padma Shri in 2020.
Episode four features Sundaram Verma, an environmentalist from Danta, Rajasthan, whose afforestation efforts have led to the successful plantation of over 50,000 trees, significantly contributing to environmental conservation. Episode five focuses on Javed Ahmad Tak, a disability rights activist from Kashmir who founded the Zaiba Aapa Institute of Inclusive Education for specially-abled children and played a pivotal role in implementing the Rights of Persons with Disabilities Act 2016 in Jammu and Kashmir. Lastly, Episode six introduces Jamuna Tudu, affectionately known as ‘Lady Tarzan,’ who courageously protected forests in Jharkhand, confronting timber mafias and Naxals to safeguard these vital ecosystems. These episodes celebrate the unsung heroes of India whose selfless deeds have made ÂÂÂa profound impact on society.
The Khul Ke Baat: Padma Awardees Ke Saath series promises a total of 13 enlightening episodes, featuring more Padma Awardees. The show aims to inspire and celebrate those whose noble service has made an immense impact in creating a better society and ‘Atmanirbhar Bharat’.
Khul Ke founder & CEO Piyush Kulshreshtha said, “The idea behind the Padma Awardees Series was to shine the spotlight on the achievements of ordinary people who have made a distinct and meaningful contribution to society. We are focusing on inspiring stories of people who have the right attitude, no jealousy, and no insecurity. The stories which focus on love, kindness, high empathy value and altruism. None of the awardees put themselves before their work which is the common thread among them. It is their work that comes first. We believe if anybody should influence the society today, it is them and achievers like them in many other fields. We need icons who can share their experiential wisdom. In today’s time, this is what our influencers should be like.”
Khul Ke Baat: Padma Awardees Ke Saath is available for viewing on Khul Ke platform, where you can access these exclusive conversations with India’s changemakers. Join us on this inspiring journey to celebrate and learn from these incredible individuals. The series can be accessed on the Khul Ke app via browser, Android Play Store, and the App Store on iOS. Simply head to the ‘Roundtable’ tab on the app and watch the series now.
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.
