eNews
Saavn Expands Original Programming with New Genres and A-List Entertainers
MUMBAI: Saavn today revealed an entirely new slate of original programming to debut in August and September. The new collection of shows includes Film Companion with Anupama Chopra and #NoFilter Neha hosted by Neha Dhupia. Additionally, Raghu Dixit, internationally acclaimed Indian Indie musician & music director, joins Saavn’s Artist-in-Residence (AiR) program. These exciting announcements follow the launch of Saavn’s Original Programming in April 2016, which marked the evolution of India’s largest music streaming service into a multimedia entertainment streaming platform.
Starting August 11th, Saavn Originals will premiereFilm Companion with Anupama Chopra. In addition to movie reviews, Film Companion will feature interviews with A-list film stars, as well an in-depth look at what’s worth watching in India’s ever-growing movie scene. “I’m very excited to be on Saavn,” said Anupama Chopra, “I’ve never done a long form audio show before and this is both an exciting and challenging opportunity. I hope to learn and grow with Saavn.”
In Film Companion’s special premiere episode, Anupama talks to the who’s who of Bollywood music in a power-packed panel including music director duo Vishal-Shekhar, well-known Indian film composer, musician, singer and lyricist Amit Trivedi, and the famous music composer and a guitarist, Ehsaan Noorani, on the changing landscape and future of Bollywood and the music industry. Following this premiere, Film Companion with Anupama Chopra will stream twice weekly every Thursday and Friday on Saavn.
Saavn also adds tongue-in-cheek talk show#NoFilter Neha with Neha Dhupia to the Saavn Originals lineup. Neha, a well-known Indian Bollywood actor and former Femina Miss India Universe 2002, will be in conversation with celebrities from Bollywood, fashion, sports, and music in her notoriously wicked style. “A big inspiration for me are Tina Fey, Ellen DeGeneres, Madonna and other dynamic strong women who are constantly pushing themselves and doing so many things,” said Neha Dupia. “For me having an audio chat show is another exciting challenge which I hope gives me another opportunity to show my quirky side. Saavn to me is a place where the talented meet the cool and vice-versa and I am happy to get on board with them as a content creator.”
#NoFilter promises to shock, awe, and delight Saavn’s 18 million listeners starting mid-September.
“This is a breakthrough moment for us,” said Gaurav Wadhwa, VP of Entertainment and Originals at Saavn. “In addition to widening our fan base, these new shows will help to solidify Saavn’s transition from music streaming to becoming a global entertainment streaming hub. We’re ecstatic to bring these shows to our growing audience and can’t wait to bring them even more fantastic programming.”
Apart from these new shows, Saavn announces internationally renowned artist Raghu Dixit as the next musician to join Saavn’s Artist-in-Residence program, Saavn’s in-house program for independent and breakthrough artists. Building on AiR’s successful launch with popular electronic artist Nucleya, Dixit will create new music, playlists, collaborations and audio shows exclusively for Saavn, expanding Saavn’s already diverse Indie music and Regional music offerings.
“I’m really excited about my partnership with Saavn for the Artist-in-Residence initiative,” said Raghu Dixit, “I love the freedom that Saavn gives the artist and the trust they display in giving artist full control over content being created. I know that with their diverse and highly engaged listeners, this partnership will be a great step forward in taking quality Indian independent music around the world.”
Having previously performed for the Queen of England at the Diamond Jubilee Celebrations in Windsor, as well as the largest festival in Glastonbury, Dixit is no stranger to the world stage. On August 5th, Dixit embarks on the most extensive tour of his career – the “Masterplan for Happiness” tour taking place in the U.S., Canada, Ireland and the U.K. To kick off Dixit’s debut as Saavn’s AiR, Saavn will be backing Dixit’s global tour by promoting the tour through Saavn’s app and social channels.
The full slate of Saavn Originals, debuting this August and September, includes:
1. Passport Approved with Sat Bisla, launching on 2nd August.
2. Film Companion with Anupama Chopra, launching on 11th August.
3. Ek Kahaani Aisi Bhi launching on 19th August.
4. Audioboom syndicated shows launching in the first week of August:
• Like-minded friends
• The Comedy Score
• Hip Hop saved my life with Romesh Ranganathan
• The Cricket Podblast
• Official Leicester City Podcast
• United We Stand
• The Football Forum
• Walsh on Film
• Undisclosed – State vs Adnan Syed
5. #NoFilter Neha by Neha Dhupia launching mid-September
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
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.
