iWorld
How did OTT Evolve and Where Is It Heading
We create innovative solutions against problems as a tendency. With the conventional means of video content, there were many problems associated. They mostly were because of the format of content distribution which didn’t go hand in hand with the habits people had started acquiring.
All technological advancements have been directed towards convenience. The shopping scene shifting to digital means was a huge revolution in society. Now people are accustomed to making decisions of their own will, not constrained by time or place.
Although content consumption had taken a leap from conventional TVs to satellite-based networks that could be customised, this wasn’t enough. There was more to be narrowed down. Not just the selection of channels, but the selection of shows and more was what customers wanted.
The simple solution to this was an OTT platform. OTTs like Prime Video, Aha and other leading OTT platforms in India provide the users with the freedom to select the shows that they want to watch. They can choose from a pool of shows and hardly ever it is that they cannot find what they need.
On the other hand, these OTTs also do a great job with AI in engaging a customer with personalised suggestions to watch.
It is not the ultimate solution to the entertainment needs of humans, which would be a pool of anything and everything. For example, a drawback that the OTTs have is shows in a limited number of languages. Netflix might not have Telugu content. Although we have Aha, a user would need to take multiple subscriptions to enjoy content in both languages.
Rise of OTTs
With more people turning to online means of entertainment content, the OTT industry skyrocketed. With Netflix leading the game globally, with its national competitors like Prime Video, millions of people found value in these OTTs who then decided to ditch cable TV or satellite connections.
The price was another advantage of the OTTs. They could be pretty affordable. You can find tons of content at a nominal charge of as little as Rs 99 per month. This works because people have the access to a huge range of content at their fingertips. Moreover, they would be able to select the platform based on their interests, type of shows etc.
However, we are also affected by the rise of convenience offers by OTTs.
No time to think!
As we have the option to get entertained at all times, it is very easy to click on a thumbnail and watch an entire show. This can also be the first thing we would be drawn towards when feeling bored. Because we keep ourselves so engaged all the time, we may lose out on other important things. Ultimately, going to the gym, or spending time in the kitchen making healthy food, or learning new skills can take a backseat. Although, you don’t have to learn new skills constantly, it becomes a problem when you cannot even think about it.
Future of OTTs
We are going towards a platform that is the combination of Netflix, Prime Video, SonyLIV, Alt Balaji and everything else. Such a platform is not directed by one company. On the other hand, it is owned by the users themselves. Probably, they can curate what type of content they’d want to see depending on languages, genres and even actors. Such a platform will eradicate the current limitations in the OTT industry. And I think this is what we are heading towards.
Conclusion
OTTs are here to stay. Not only can you enjoy the bounties, but also contribute to the platforms by creating your own content. Many video streaming platforms like YouTube allow you to do so.
You can be a part of the online content consuming audience with a subscription fee. Sp try out for yourself and try to make the best of it while you do so.
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.
