iWorld
More education, awareness & upskilling are important as we solve some interesting problems in the Web3 space: Chingari CTO Tariq Wali
Mumbai: Launched back in 2018, the short-video app Chingari has made rapid strides. Since then, the home-grown app has emerged as the one-stop destination for entertaining, engaging videos across diverse categories such as dancing, singing, transformation, innovative skills, etc. Chingari’s eclectic platform entertains 150 million+ users across India and witnesses videos in 15+ languages.
The app has been working towards adding value to its content creators by enabling them to create unique content that gets liked, shared and rewarded through Gari Social Tokens. This fosters content monetisation and puts the power of content creation directly in the hands of the creators. The first Indian social crypto token, Gari, has been listed on several top global centralised exchanges, including HUObi, FTX, KuCoin, Gate.io, OKEx, and MEXC Global. Chingari is bringing the web3 revolution to the creator economy with its Gari token. Gari is now available on the Chingari app, and creators can start making videos and earning Gari Social Tokens.
Indiantelevision.com caught up with Chingari’s chief technology officer, Tariq Wali. He describes himself as, “There is not a silver bullet to build and run a successful startup. A start-up is anything but its products that don’t just work but delight their users. Technology is an enabler to solve user/business problems. Most of my time goes into what I call building the organisation, and that’s a combination of people, process, product, and technology.
“I come from a systems/software/video engineering background, having seen scale and disruption in technology enabling startups early on – my engagement could be anything from providing direction to engineering and product to solve complex problems, design and architecture to any trivial issue that impacts Chingari users and ensuring we have the right instrumentation towards the reliability of our products.
“That said, I lead data, backend, AIML, DevOps/SRE, and product as lead/manager/comrade, ensuring all our investments are protected and setting the vision and building towards our two-year roadmap.”
Edited Excerpts:
On the short-video industry that has evolved over the past few years
Tariq: It has evolved significantly. A lot has happened in the last two to three years. Globally, the video industry has shot up on account of content being consumed digitally in different forms, like connected televisions, mobile devices, short-form content, long-form content, and live linear content. User-generated content (UGC) was one thing that was slightly behind.
At some point, Tiktok led that race, and when it got banned, it gave birth to homegrown short video apps. That was a few years ago. Now India is leading from the front in the short video space. The UGC short is a real thing. It has created a new industry called the “creator economy.” This is a full-time job that pays money to millions of creators around the world, including in India.
On web2 platforms, creators and influencers would create content and not get paid for it. But in web3, creators get paid. Chingari is the world’s first social media product on a blockchain and has a blockchain economic design to it. We incentivise content creators to create content. Users are also incentivised to consume that content. The creator economy is an industry like e-commerce.
On the challenges of growing rapidly at scale
Tariq: Lack of tech talent. The challenge is that there is rapid growth in tier two and three cities, with improved internet penetration and the exploitation of smartphones. Everyone has access to the internet and social media. They are also getting onto short-form video platforms, which means scale and tremendous growth. Engineering maturity for a tech organisation like ours to have engineering muscle to build products and services to support that kind of growth is very important. Globally, there is a shortage of web3 talent in short-form content.
For a company like ours, it becomes twice as challenging. We have to attract the right talent. That is where we have to innovate. More education, awareness, and upskilling are all important as we solve some interesting problems in the web3 space.
On Chingari’s USP
Tariq: We have a strong business model that is very unique. Other short-video businesses do not have that. We are a crypto web3 organisation. Web3 is the birth of a new Internet. The Internet that you know of today is a product of the exploitation that has happened over the past two decades. Google, Facebook, Instagram, and Amazon, or “big tech,” created these social media products and amassed massive amounts of user data. That data was exploited by these companies. Users get nothing. On the other hand, web3 is creating a new Internet which is de-centralised, transparent, and borderless.
Chingari creates products and services around a community. We are about a community, not about a user. The users become the community. Other short video apps are about users and exploiting their data. They run that old rat race. We are not doing that. We build everything for the community, and the community has a say in what we build.
There is a process of governance. We have 3,00,000 active community members on one of our channels. Then there are another few hundred thousand members on Twitter. We have an open source roadmap. There is a clear visibility of what we are building and why. We have a token system wherein users can buy a token, which shows that they believe in the project. They invest in that token, which has utility. That token acts as a currency on our platform and is called Gari.
On the business model
Tariq: Creators make money from creating content. The videos get shared on the network. It gets likes, shares, downloads, and so on and so forth. You make money out of it. The more time users spend on the platform watching and engaging with the content, the more money they make. Our programme is called Gari Mining. It is about engaging with content. You kind of mine the content. The network of users spends time on a daily basis and the pool of tokens is allocated on a daily basis. Both creators and users make money.
There are other things. We have an NFT marketplace coming up. We have a management and processing fee for the transactions done on the blockchain. Our monetisation opportunities are around NFTs, the token utility use cases. There are also a small number of crypto-led advertisements and partnerships.
On Chingari app’s usage and targets that have been set for the year
Tariq: We have nearly one million crypto users on the platform. We have 45 million users on the short video side. We have a significant number of users converting to the crypto wallet. The Gari miners spend a significant amount of time on the platform. Their engagement is unparalleled compared to any other short video app in the world. Some spend hours watching content as they get paid for it.
We are definitely on-boarding a lot more crypto users this year. The aim is to take on board as many as possible. We are scaling short video, which is our core product, to transition it to be a pure-play web3 product. There will be a social media component to it. We have audio rooms. We are building a live video which will also have rich crypto integration in it.
On trends being seen in terms of the kind of short form content being consumed
Tariq: There is a wide range of content available, including dance, music, motivational, DIY, fitness, and sports. There is a higher tendency for people to consume more dance and entertainment content.
On the app’s tech features that help users create more innovative content
Tariq: We have significantly invested in the cameras. That is a USP for us. We have made that experience seamless for creators to create beautiful, high-quality videos. We have given them the right set of tools to create those videos and service them on the platform. Then there are features like boosting one’s profile or boosting one’s post with tokens. You can ensure that your post gets viral and has a wider reach. The success of our platform lies in A.I. ML.
Everything is intelligently processed. The content gets uploaded and it is then moderated, classified, and categorised to determine its premiumness. Content is run through the recommendation pipeline. So ultimately, there is a multi-stage AI/ML recommendation and content management system that gives the right kind of content to the user at any given point of time.
On regional languages
Tariq: We work in 13 languages. We are going international. We have Indonesia, Turkey, and the US. We will enter Europe. There is good interest both in the token and in the product. Tamil and Telugu are doing really well in India. Regional is the future, though the majority of content consumption in India is still in Hindi and English.
On the role of NFTs and crypto for the Chingari app
Tariq: We are building an NFT video marketplace. To some extent, web3 NFTs have been associated with art and music. But nothing is there around video, especially with UGC. We are the first ones to really build it. The goal isn’t just to be the first to do it. We are solving a very unique problem. The creator economy has massive potential globally. We are solving this with crypto through web3, transparent incentivisation and engagement. Now we are taking things to the next level with a creator-led NFT marketplace where anybody can basically create, buy, sell, mint, and auction UGC videos. We reckon it will fare well.
On the confusion regarding crypto regulation
Tariq: I think that with any innovation that has the potential to disrupt incumbent industries, those industries view it as a threat. Crypto can disrupt the banking, finance, and insurance industries. The government and the industry realise this. Policymakers recognise it. So there is going to be some amount of resistance. India has 100 million users in the crypto space, and a lot of good people realise the potential that crypto and web3 have. It shows that India is leading from the front in web 3. Polygon and Chingari are examples. India has the largest web developer talent in the world. We have to capitalise on that.
There is massive potential for other verticals as well, like tech, healthcare etc. Regulatory pressure will be there. There will be resistance, but it will sort of become conducive at some point, one way or another. Crypto projects are such that one keeps building and solving things, innovating. That is the philosophy. The process of creating a new Internet is not going to be easy. You are going to be disrupting things. There will be challenges and hurdles, but we have to marry them.
On the importance of e-commerce in terms of building a creator economy
Tariq: I don’t think we have cracked that nut really well. There is potential in the short video space for e-commerce, but our focus is a lot on the user experience. We do not want to introduce anything intrusive that hampers the user experience.
On the boost that Jio, 5G have given the short video industry
Tariq: The quality of experience and services needs to improve for the video industry. Our backbone systems have to improve a lot. If 5G is the answer, then it has to scale and fly, but I do not think that it has made a big difference as yet for the commercial or consumer Internet. There is still network congestion in many cases in a city like Bengaluru, but it is a very important problem that needs to be solved by telcos and the government. We do have the benefit that data here is far cheaper than in other countries, but the download and bandwidth improvement that we are promised with 4G or 5G needs to happen.
On data privacy
Tariq: It is very important. It is a significant part of everything that we do. It is about security being layered into how and what we build.
On fund raising plans and an M&A possibility
Tariq: Yes, we are in discussions to raise funds. The sentiment towards funding should be positive because, as I said, we are building in the web3 and crypto space. Engineering muscle and capital are needed to solve interesting problems. We are positive about our future due to the problems that we are solving and the roadmap and community that we have. We are not looking to acquire anyone.
On the factors that determine valuation
Tariq: “Valuation” in our case is about what we are doing, the roadmap. Of course, it is about users, engagement, growth, and expansion. It is also about the vertical that you are in. I think that on that checklist we are really green. We scored really well on those points. We are the first short video platform of this scale on the blockchain. It is not just that we are on blockchain. We are doing something really unique and interesting in a way that nobody else is doing. Instagram, Youtube, and Tiktok cannot do it. But we are doing it.
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.
