iWorld
Netflix expands its 2025 content slate with over 25 new titles
MUMBAI: If Amazon makes a big bang, can Netflix be far behind? Of course not.
Today, Netflix pulled back the curtain on its power-packed 2025 content slate, unveiling an eclectic mix of films, series, and unscripted originals. Unlike Amazon Prime Video, which hosted a lavish industry party, Netflix chose to keep things all-business—because let’s face it, they’d rather spend on content than caviar. The lineup boasts over 25 titles spanning multiple genres, ensuring that no matter what your mood, there’s a binge-worthy fix waiting for you.
Leading the charge is Aryan Khan’s directorial debut, The Ba**ds of Bollywood, produced by Shah Rukh Khan and Gauri Khan’s Red Chillies Entertainment. The series blends sharp industry satire with high-stakes drama, offering an inside look at the chaos of Bollywood. Expect plenty of witty references and some surprise cameos from the who’s who of Indian cinema.
Adding to the action-packed lineup, Saif Ali Khan headlines Jewel Thief – The Heist Begins, a high-stakes thriller surrounding the hunt for the priceless African Red Sun diamond. Directed by Siddharth Anand and featuring Jaideep Ahlawat and Kunal Kapoor, this promises an exhilarating game of deception, strategy, and intrigue.
Netflix’s love affair with romance continues with Aap Jaisa Koi, starring R. Madhavan and Fatima Sana Shaikh, and Nadaaniyan, featuring Ibrahim Ali Khan and Khushi Kapoor in a classic opposites-attract setup. Meanwhile, Dhoom Dhaam throws Yami Gautam Dhar and Pratik Gandhi into a wedding-night-gone-wrong adventure that’s equal parts thrilling and hilarious.
On the Tamil front, Test delivers a compelling narrative with R. Madhavan, Nayanthara, Siddharth, and Meera Jasmine against the backdrop of a historic Chennai cricket match. Helmed by S. Sashikanth, this direct-to-OTT release highlights Netflix India’s commitment to regional storytelling.
Comedy lovers can look forward to Toaster, a quirky family drama starring Rajkummar Rao and Sanya Malhotra, centered around a wedding gift fiasco that spirals into chaos. Meanwhile, Delhi Crime Season 3 brings back Shefali Shah, joined by Huma Qureshi and Sayani Gupta, in a gripping investigation into human trafficking.
Fan-favorite Kohrra returns for Season 2 with Barun Sobti and Mona Singh tackling a fresh murder mystery, while Rana Naidu Season 2 sees Rana Daggubati and Venkatesh Daggubati returning, this time with Arjun Rampal as their new nemesis. Additionally, Khakee: The Bengal Chapter introduces Jeet as an unyielding cop squaring off against Prosenjit Chatterjee’s political mastermind.
The thrills continue with YRF Entertainment’s Mandala Murders, starring Vaani Kapoor and Vaibhav Raj Gupta, which uncovers a series of ritualistic killings tied to a mysterious secret society. Akka, another YRF production, features Keerthy Suresh, Radhika Apte, and Tanvi Azmi in a revenge saga drenched in blood and suspense.
Pulkit Samrat, Divyenndu, and Suvinder Vicky bring raw intensity to Glory, a gripping story of vengeance and Olympic boxing aspirations. Meanwhile, espionage thriller Saare Jahan Se Accha sees Pratik Gandhi and Sunny Hinduja navigating the treacherous world of 1970s intelligence.
Netflix forays into Telugu content with Super Subbu, where Mithila Palkar and Sundeep Kishan lead a laugh-out-loud journey of an adult sex education teacher finding herself in the most unlikely of places—a conservative village.
Unscripted entertainment takes a glamorous turn with Dining with the Kapoors, offering an intimate look at Bollywood’s first family, while The Roshans traces three generations of cinematic legacy. Stand-up special Full Volume sees Vir Das returning with a fresh dose of sharp political humor and social commentary.
Oscar-nominated short film Anuja, backed by Priyanka Chopra Jonas, Guneet Monga Kapoor, and Mindy Kaling, makes its debut, adding yet another feather to Netflix’s cap. In a groundbreaking move, Netflix has also acquired exclusive WWE programming rights for India and other territories, promising wrestling fans a knockout viewing experience.
Netflix is also diving into crime thrillers with Black Warrant, a gripping drama set in Tihar Jail, where an idealistic jailer uncovers corruption, gang wars, and deep-rooted injustice. The series has already earned a spot in Netflix’s Global Top 10 in its second week, proving its appeal worldwide.
Crime meets comedy in Dabba Cartel, where five middle-class women find themselves running an accidental drug cartel while caught in a pharma investigation. Produced by Farhan Akhtar and Ritesh Sidhwani, this darkly comic drama showcases a web of secrets, power struggles, and the sheer unpredictability of life.
Fans of The Great Indian Kapil Show can rejoice as Season 3 brings more laughs, celebrity guests, and signature desi humour. Kapil Sharma and his gang are all set to dish out fresh skits, hilarious banter, and plenty of unexpected surprises.
For cricket lovers, The Greatest Rivalry – India vs Pakistan chronicles the on-field and off-field drama of the world’s most heated cricketing contest. Featuring legends like Virender Sehwag, Shoaib Akhtar, and Sunil Gavaskar, this docuseries goes beyond boundaries to explore the history, culture, and politics that fuel this fierce competition.
Netflix is also stepping into the world of royal drama with Bhumi Pednekar and Ishaan Khatter starring in The Royals, where a polo-playing prince and a high-powered CEO clash in a whirlwind of romance, ambition, and palace intrigue. Bhumi Pednekar and Ishaan Khatter lead the cast in this lavish rom-com.
Netflix India VP of content, Monika Shergill emphasised the platform’s commitment to bold storytelling, stating, “In 2025, we’re redefining storytelling by pushing creative boundaries like never before, delivering an unparalleled variety of world-class entertainment. From dreamy romcoms and high-stakes dramas to action-packed thrillers, beloved fan-favorite franchises, and laugh-out-loud comedies, there’s something for everyone.”
Netflix’s 2025 slate is poised to redefine streaming entertainment in India. Whether it’s high-octane action, gripping thrillers, laugh-out-loud comedies, or heartwarming romances, one thing’s guaranteed—your binge list just got a whole lot longer. And with the rise of local-language content, expect even more diverse storytelling that speaks to every corner of India. If the 2024 lineup was a game-changer, 2025 is about to blow the roof off the OTT space.
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.
