iWorld
Jio juggernaut continued to add as Vodafone shed subs in Aug-18
BENGALURU: MukeshDhirubhai Ambani’s largest startup in the world in the form of Reliance JioInfocomm Limited, or simply Jio, continued adding subscribers in the month of August 2018 (Aug-18, month under review) according to Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (Trai) Telecom subscription data. According to the available Trai data for Aug-18, Jio’s subscriber base had been growing at about 5 percent compounded rate month on month (m-o-m) in calendar year 2018. Aug-18 was no different. Jio’s subscriber base grew by 5.7 percent (5.2 percent in Jul-81) to 2,393.53lakh in Aug-18 from 2,270.50 lakh in Jul-18. Since December 31, 2017, Jiohad added 791.40 lakh subscribers until Aug-18– it grew 49.4 percent in the period.
In the meantime, Vodafone lost 125.4 lakh (12.5 million, 1.25 crore) subscribers (20 percent) in Aug-18 as compared to Jul-18. Vodafone had a subscriber base of 637.90 lakh in Jul-18, while in Aug-18 the company had 512.5 lakh subscribers according to Trai data. The Vodafone India and Idea Cellular combine had to forego about 140 lakh (14 million, 1.4 crore) subscribers in six circles and revenues of more than Rs2,000 crore in three circles as the merged Vodafone and Idea Cellular entity would breach the Department of Telecommunications (DoT)-prescribed 50 percent cap on subscribers and revenue in the respective States.
Trai data for Aug-18 says thatas per the reports received from 296 operators, the number of broadband subscribers increased from 4,602.4 lakh (460.24 million, 46.042 crore) at the end of Jul-18 to 4,636.6 lakh (463.66 million, 46.366 crore) at the end of Aug-18 with a monthly growth rate of 0.74 percent. Subscriber numbers for all the three broadband services segments – wireline or wired; mobile devices comprising of phones and dongles; and fixed wireless (Wi-Fi, Wi-Max, Point-to- Point Radio & VSAT) grew in Aug-18. Please refer to the figure below:
The top five service providers constituted 97.80 percent market share of the total broadband subscribers at the end of Aug-18. These service providers were Jio( 2,392.3lakh, 239.23 million23.923 crore), Bharti Airtel or Airtel (983.6 lakh, 98.36 million, 9.836 crore), Vodafone (512.5 lakh, 51.25 million, 5.125 crore), Idea Cellular (442.4 lakh, 44.24million, 4.424 crore) and BSNL (203.5lakh, 20.35 million, 2.035 crore).
Wireless broadband internet
Wireless broadband subscribers growth in absolute numbers was led by Jio, followed byAirtel, Idea Cellular and the public sector BSNL. Vodafone was the only player among the top 5 wireless broadband internet services providers that lost subscribers in Aug-18.
As on 31Aug, 2018, the top five wireless broadband service providers were Jio (2,392.30 lakh, 239.23 million, 23.923 crore), Bharti Airtel (961.2 lakh, 96.12 million, 9.612 crore), Vodafone (512.5 lakh, 51.25 million, 5.125 crore), Idea Cellular (442.4 lakh, 44.24million, 4.424 crore) and BSNL (111.90 lakh, 11.19 million, 1.119 crore). Please refer to the figure below:
Wired broadband internet
Wired broadband internet subscribers grew by 70,000 in Aug-18 as compared to Jul-18 with four of the top 5 Wireline broadband services providers showing growth while one, Mahanagar Telcom Nigam Limited (MTNL) showing a decline in subscribers by 20,000. The top 5 wired broadband service providers added 50,000 subscribers during the month under review, 20,000 subscribers were added by other service providers.
As on 31 August, 2018, the top five wired broadband serviceproviders were BSNL (91.6 lakh, 9.16million, 0.916 crore), Bharti Airtel (22.4 lakh, 2.24 million, 0.224 crore), Atria Convergence Technologies (13.6 lakh, 1.36 million, 0.13 crore), MTNL (8.10 lakh, 0.81 million, 0.081 crore) and Hathway Cable & Datacom (7.6 lakh, 0.76 million, 0.076 crore).
Airtel added the highest number of wireline broadband subscribers in calendar year 2018 until Aug-18 with 90,000, followed by Atria Convergence Technologies (ACT) which added 80,000 subs during the period.
Please refer to the figure below:
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.
