iWorld
Jio numbers up on larger subscriber base and higher usage of services
BENGALURU: When Mukesh Dhirubhai Ambani’s biggest startup in the world Reliance Jio Infocomm Ltd (Jio) started operations it had startled the Indian telecom industry ecosystem in the country. Jio had reported a net profit of Rs 723 crore against operating revenue of Rs 20,154 crore and value of services of Rs 23,714 crore for fiscal 2018 (year ended 31 March 2018, FY 2018).
For the first quarter ended 30 June 2018 (Q1 2018, quarter or period under review), the company’s operating revenue increased 14.6 per cent quarter-on-quarter (q-o-q) to Rs 9,653 crore from Rs 8,421 crore in the immediate trailing quarter Q4 2018. Net standalone profit for the quarter under review was Rs 612 crore.
Jio’s EBIT increased 14.7 per cent q-o-q n Q1 2019 to Rs 1,715 crore as compared to Rs 1,495 crore in Q4 2018. EBITDA increased 16.8 per cent q-o-q during the period under review to Rs 3,147 crore.
Jio says in its earnings media release that customer activity grew substantially in the quarter under review with average data consumption per user per month of 10.6 GB and average voice consumption of 744 minutes per user per month. Also, video consumption drove most of the usage, increasing to 340 crore hours per month on the network; average video consumption of 15.4 hours per subscriber per month. For Q4 2018, the company had reported average data consumption per user per month of 9.7 GB and average voice consumption of 716 minutes per user per month. Also video consumption was at over 240 crore hours per month in the immediate trailing quarter.
Jio added 28.7 subscribers Q1 2019 and hence its subscriber base increased to 215.3 million in Q1 2019 from 186.6 million in Q4 2018. Average revenue per user (ARPU) declined slightly q-o-q to Rs 135.50 per month in Q1 2019 from Rs 137.1 per month in Q4 2018. The company reported subscriber churn of 0.3 per cent per month in Q1 2019 as compared to a slightly lower 0.25 per cent per month in Q4 2018.
Reliance Industries numbers for Q1 2019
Reliance Industries Ltd (RIL) is the parent company of Jio. RIL consolidated revenue increased by 56.5 per cent to Rs 141,699 crore ($ 20.7 billion) in Q1 2019. Consolidated PBDIT increased by 52.8 per cent to Rs 22,449 crore ($ 3.3 billion). Consolidated Profit Before Tax increased by 30.3 per cent to Rs 13,726 crore ($ 2.0 billion).Consolidated Cash Profit increased by 41.2 per cent to Rs 15,892 crore ($ 2.3 billion). Consolidated Net Profit increased by 17.9 per cent to Rs 9,459 crore ($ 1.4 billion).
Company speak
Commenting on the results, Reliance Industries Ltd, the parent company of Jio, chairman and managing director Mukesh Ambani said: “We continue to focus on strong delivery through operational excellence in our portfolio of businesses. Financial results of Q1 2019 underscore the strength of the petrochemicals we have reinforced over the last investment cycle. Our petrochemicals business generated record EBITDA with strong volumes and an upswing in polyester chain margins. Refining business performance remained steady despite the seasonal weakness in cracks. Continuing strength in global demand for oil products and implementation of more stringent environmental norms for marine fuels augurs well for our refining business. Our consumer businesses continue to scale new highs and now account for nearly 21 per cent of consolidated segment EBITDA. Retail business revenues have more than doubled and EBITDA has trebled on a y-o-y basis. Jio added a record number of subscribers, highlighting the compelling technology and value proposition that Jio offers vis-à-vis other networks. The scalability of our consumer business platforms is driving unprecedented value generation for our customers, our country and our shareholders.”
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.
