iWorld
Amazon Prime Video to bring 14 new titles in 9 languages
MUMBAI: This July, Amazon will provide Prime members worldwide the chance to get epic deals for its longest Prime Day ever. Now in its third year in India, Prime Day starts at midnight on Monday, July 15 and – for the first time ever – runs for 48 hours, offering members two full days of the best in shopping, savings and entertainment. Prime members will enjoy the best deals with Amazon’s lowest prices of the year, over 1,000 new product launches and never-seen-before entertainment.
Prime is enjoyed by more than 100 million Prime members in 18 countries including India. Not a member yet? Join Prime for INR 129/month at amazon.in/primeday to enjoy Prime benefits such as free & fast delivery, unlimited video, ad-free music, exclusive deals and more. On Prime Now, members in Bengaluru, Mumbai, New Delhi & Hyderabad enjoy ultra-fast two-hour delivery of consumer electronics, Amazon Devices, everyday essentials and more.
“Get ready for Prime Day! – our biggest festival for Prime members gets bigger than ever this year with a two-day celebration filled with the most phenomenal deals, over thousand new product launches, blockbuster entertainment and more.” said, Amit Agarwal, SVP & Country Manager, Amazon India. “Our vision is that Prime Day should be the absolute best time to be a member where you can enjoy shopping, savings, entertainment and truly some of the best deals Prime members have ever seen. Stay tuned as we reveal big savings, thousands of Prime Day launches, as well as blockbuster entertainment and more leading up to Prime Day on July 15 and 16.”
Shopping
– 48 hours of exclusive shopping celebration – Starting 12 midnight on July 15 until July 16
– Best Deals with the lowest prices of the year across smartphones, consumer electronics, appliances, TVs, kitchen, daily essentials, toys, fashion, beauty and more. Find the biggest Prime Day deals ever on Amazon Devices
– Over 1,000 new product launches – Exciting surprises from OnePlus, Samsung M40, Oppo F11 pro, LG W30 phones, latest laptops powered by Intel – HP i3 Windows touch laptop and Lenovo Legion Y540 gaming laptop. Voice enabled Alexa Smart TVs from Panasonic, smart watch from Amazfit, premium Bluetooth headphones from Sennheiser, new range of watches from Kate Spade, Marks & Spencer new season collection, new apparel and shoes collection from United Colors of Benetton, new range of shoes from Clarks, Mothercare Kids’ New Season Collection, TIGI Bed Head hair and skin care range, Cadbury gift packs, Maggi Fusion Noodles, new range from LEGO, India’s first-ever Alexa-enabled washing machine from IFB, Washing Machines by AmazonBasics, Eureka Forbes Water Purifier, Dyson’s handheld vacuum cleaner and lots more!
– Shop from hundreds of small sellers, emerging start-up brands from Amazon Launchpad as well as regional sellers from the Amazon Saheli and Kala Haat programs offering, for the first time, hand-crafted Pochampally Ikat, Patola silk, Khadi jackets, tribal products, stoles, blue pottery, stationery and more!
– Save Big – On Prime Day members get 10% instant discount with HDFC Bank Debit & Credit Cards, unlimited reward points with Amazon Pay ICICI Bank Credit Card plus No Cost EMI on credit/debit cards and Bajaj Finserv EMI cards.
Members can begin saving ahead of Prime Day and get up to INR 2,500 cashback from Amazon Pay on domestic flight bookings on Amazon.in. When members use Amazon Pay they can avail cashbacks up to INR 850 on popular apps Yatra, Box8, EazyDiner and Medlife. Leading up to Prime Day, members can participate in activities like signing up for annual Prime membership, shopping in select categories and collect ‘Prime Day offers’ which can be used to get additional cashback on their Prime Day shopping.
Entertainment and More
Starting July 01, Prime members can begin celebrating Prime Day early with exclusive blockbuster entertainment launches from Prime Video and Amazon Prime Music.
· 14 new titles over 14 days in 9 languages on Prime Video – Prime Day celebrations start early on Amazon Prime Video with a 14 day entertainment marathon. Starting July 01, Prime Members can enjoy 14 blockbusters across International, Indian and Regional titles. Customers can enjoy blockbuster title premieres across English, Hindi, Tamil, Malayalam, Marathi, Bengali, Punjabi, Telugu and Kannada languages on Amazon Prime Video as a run up to Prime Day 2019. The line-up leading to Prime Day includes Kalank (Hindi), Venom (English), Maharshi (Telugu), Ishq (Malayalam), NGK (Tamil), Parvathamma (Kannada), Mukalava (Punjabi), Bhoot Chaturdashi (Bengali), Chandigarh Amritsar Chandigarh (Punjabi), A Star Is Born (English), Mogra Phulaala (Marathi) amongst others. Much loved Amazon Original Series, Comicstaan returns with Season 2 starting July 12 to find India’s next big comedy sensation.
· Listen to new playlists on Amazon Prime Music – On Amazon Prime Music, sit back and enjoy ad-free seamless music with playlists curated by an array of celebrities like Shreya Ghoshal, Sonu Nigam, Armaan Malik, Raftaar, Neha Kakkar, The Jonas Brothers among many more. Bringing top celebrities closer to Prime Music listeners, these playlists have been personally curated and appeal to a variety of moods, themes and occasions. Starting today, Prime members who haven’t tried Prime Music before can stream their first song and get INR 200 as Amazon Pay balance and an additional 20% cashback on purchase of any Echo device on Prime Day.
Experience Prime Day new products launches & entertainment specials in Virtual Reality
Online shoppers no longer need to be content with seeing only pictures or videos before buying products. Amplifying last year’s innovation, Prime day will also bring back the touch-and-try charm to online shopping with one-of-a-kind Virtual Reality (VR) experience from July 06. Customers can experience hundreds of new products launching on Prime Day in an immersive environment, where they can view products in life-size, inspect products up close and enjoy 360-degree views. Customers can also catch trailers and exclusive content from Prime Video’s blockbuster lineup launching for Prime Day in a virtual cinema. This VR experience is open to all customers with special access to Prime members at select malls in Delhi NCR, Bengaluru, Hyderabad, Chennai, Pune and Kolkata.
Every Day Made Better with Prime
Prime is designed to make your life better every single day. Over 100 million Prime members around the world enjoy the many benefits of Prime, including the best of shopping and entertainment on Prime Day. In India, this includes free one-day, two-day delivery, unlimited access to award-winning movies and TV episodes with Prime Video; unlimited access to Prime Music, unlimited access to bestselling eBooks through Prime Reading early access to select Lightning Deals and more. Members in Delhi NCR, Bengaluru, Hyderabad and Mumbai can enjoy ultra-fast 2-hour delivery on Amazon devices, consumer electronics and everyday essentials on the Prime Now Ap. Log on to www.amazonin/prime and become a Prime member today.
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.
