iWorld
Kiran Mani-speak about Indian OTT at the India Digital Summit
MUMBAI: During the India Digital Summit, Kiran Mani, CEO – Digital at Jio Star, spoke compellingly about the urgent need for the over-the-top (OTT) industry to embrace multiple economic models beyond the traditional revenue streams of advertising and subscription. Engaging in a lively fireside chat with Ashish Pherwani of EY India, Mani underlined that sustainable storytelling in the digital age hinges on innovative business strategies.
“If you want to justify the economics of storytelling, it has to follow more economic models,” Mani stated, emphasising that a reliance solely on advertising is inadequate. He expressed optimism about the growth potential of both advertising and subscription revenues in India due to robust economic tailwinds. However, he also noted that the true potential of the subscription market has yet to be realised.
To illustrate this point, Mani provided striking statistics indicating that while India boasts a massive 700-million OTT viewership base, the actual number of subscriptions currently stands at around 60 to 70 million. He attributed part of this gap to challenges in the payment gateways available in India, stating, “Payment gateways are built for transactions, not for mandates,” which hinders the ability for consumers to engage in subscription models effectively.
Mani highlighted the extraordinary success of Jio Cinema Premium, which gained an impressive 20 million subscribers in record time. This achievement was largely driven by the platform’s disruptive pricing strategy of just Rs 29, which strategically bypassed middlemen to reach consumers directly. He commented on existing subscription models, saying, “A one-size-fits-all subscription, saying that you can eat all the menu items in a buffet for a fixed price, has its limitations.”
Drawing on his previous role at Google, Mani criticised the outdated methods commonly used in the advertising sector, which he argued are overly reliant on gut feelings rather than data. “We’re still at the early stages of adopting a data-driven approach to consumer targeting,” he acknowledged. “Once we fully embrace it, we’ll realize we’ve been overspending money in cities while neglecting smaller towns.” Mani assured attendees that the future of advertising will be marked by continued growth and the need for more informed marketing decisions.
He further pointed out the ineffectiveness of a one-size-fits-all advertising model, stating that platforms which focus solely on brand advertising have specific limitations. “What we offer our advertisers is a dual approach. We say, yes, we are a mass-reach platform, and we will always get you the reach, but we also offer a premium reach platform,” he said.
As Jio Star—formed from the merger of Star India and Viacom18—continues navigating the rapidly expanding digital ecosystem, Mani noted an exhilarating convergence of connectivity and creativity. “India today is a billion-screen connected audience,” he emphasized, highlighting how various content segments—sports, entertainment, short-form content, and gaming—are flourishing. He credited the influx of venture capitalists into nearly every area of this ecosystem as a testament to the ongoing growth.
Mani also pointed out the seismic shift in the media landscape, noting that digital has recently overtaken television to become the largest segment of the Indian media sector. “There are 325 million households in India, yet the number of households actually paying for digital content remains below 15 million,” he stated, raising important questions about whether digital will ever become a mass product or if subscription models will be left behind compared to traditional TV.
The CEO was particularly encouraged by the emergence of audiences from Tier 2 and Tier 3 towns, many of whom are gaining access to content for the first time through affordable devices costing less than Rs 5,000. He remarked on the impact of live-streaming events like the IPL on JioCinema, stating, “We saw six million viewers who were previously content-dark join our platform.” This underscores how OTT platforms are unlocking a broader content segment in terms of both depth and reach.
Mani elaborated on the necessity for subscriptions to adopt sustainable economic models, stressing that “advertising alone cannot support premium content or great storytelling.” He urged industry stakeholders to unlock better economic models while ensuring sustainability for everyone involved. He asserted, “The digital ad market in India is now valued at $9 billion.”
He elaborated further on the complexities of advertising, stating, “Advertising is about reaching consumers and delivering value. Our role is to ensure advertisers see impactful returns.” With an expanding middle-class consumer base, Mani believes India’s advertising market will surely grow. Nonetheless, he cautioned that the market still operates with outdated practices, such as generic solution models that fail to meet diverse audience needs.
A noteworthy point in Mani’s discussion was the evolving nature of storytelling in Indian entertainment. He mentioned that narratives are transitioning from “Shiksha” (education) and “Sushil” (docile) to “Saksham” (empowerment) and “Swabhiman” (self-respect), reflecting broader societal progress in India.
Multi-lingual content also emerged as a focal point, especially in sporting and international contexts. Mani proudly remarked on JioStar’s multilingual broadcast of the Olympics, which garnered a seven-fold increase in viewership, adding, “Hindi is now the number one language for Hollywood viewership in India.”
When prompted about his investment priorities, Mani chose to invest in platforms over content production or e-commerce, stating, “Platforms scale creativity and monetization like nothing else.” He underlined the transformative power of connectivity in driving the next wave of growth.
In concluding his remarks, Mani addressed the collective responsibility of the media and tech industries. “As content creators, we must prioritize sustainability in storytelling,” he urged. “For me, I owe it to you all to build a platform where monetization models extend beyond just advertising or subscriptions.”
Key Points:
* The OTT industry needs to diversify its economic models beyond traditional revenue streams of advertising and subscription.
* Relying solely on advertising is insufficient for building a sustainable OTT ecosystem.
* The true potential of the subscription market is yet to be unlocked.
* Payment gateways in India are built for transactions, not for mandates.
* A data-driven approach to consumer targeting is necessary for effective advertising.
* A one-size-fits-all approach is ineffective in advertising.
* The digital ad market in India is valued at $9 billion.
* Advertising is about reaching consumers and delivering value to advertisers.
* Sustainable economic models are necessary for the OTT industry.
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.
