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In defence of L&T chairman SN Subrahmanyan
MUMBAI: Larsen & Toubro chairman SN Subrahmanyan who expressed support for 90 hour workweeks for company employees, adding “how long can you stare at your wife?” has kicked up a storm. In fact, many would call it a violent typhoon.
A simple statement like that has become fodder for debates on television which newsrooms, for want of better topics or developments to discuss, have latched onto. As have so-called social media and celebrity influencers who know that what Subrahmanyan said can attract many more followers to their handles if they take a stand against him. Especially from the younger lot who can be influenced. Stand-up comics have found his statement perfect to go witty or punny about. Of course, every one can crack up as Subrahmanyan has become every Tom, Dick , Harry, Larry, Jane, Cynthia, and Joyce’s favourite whipping boy.
Respected industrialists like Harsh Goenka and Anand Mahindra have found a lot of fault with what Subrahmanyan has advocated. They have been pretty vocal about it. But both inherited large corporations. Yes, they have grown them larger. But they did not have to do the grunt work that Keshub Madhindra and Ramnath Goenka put in. The long hours, the hard toil. (I have no intention of hurting their sentiments. I am sure both Harsh and Anand worked hard too. However, the labour, the pain that an entrepreneur goes through when he’s starting up and growing his enterprise is different.)
Subrahmanyan said what he did as an engineer, and as an excellent leader, what he does to excel. Students at the IITs and other engineering institutes slog their butts off .to get their degrees. That’s probably where Subrahmanyan got his work ethic from. He works seven days a week – or may be eight, if it was possible to have those many in a week. That’s what’s made L&T a GOAT in what it does, develop infrastructure and construct anything that’s challenging. That ability has not come by chance, L&T folks work really hard.
As do scientists. As do researchers. As do inventors. As do seriously-driven journalists – online or TV – who have a mission. As do zillions of GenZ geeks and nerds or ingenious youth at startups who want to build their enterprises. In the Valley. In Bengaluru. In Hyderabad.
As do producers, writers and online video editors working in the movies or on television.
These folks are so deeply absorbed in the problem they want to solve, or the solution they want to get to, or the product they want to deliver – that time is of no consequence. They are driven. They are passionate. They take ownership of what they do. They are fortunate they love what they do. It is not a nine to five job that they are in.
BTW, how many of you have family members who are gamers?
Do they have a schedule?
I rest my case.
They love what they do, and many have made millions of dollars out of being professional gamers. Yes, they live in their cocoons and are sometimes maladjusted to the so-called fake society. Where superficiality is the norm.
Hey, also what Subrahmanyan said is nothing new.
Do you remember what the poet Henry Wadsworth Longfellow had penned almost a century or so ago :
“The heights by great men reached and kept were not attained by sudden flight, but they while their companions slept, were toiling upward in the night.”
Of course, he did not say that one needs to work seven days in so many plain words. But implied in that verse is the clarity that man or woman does not achieve greatness until she or he put their all into what they want to achieve.
Do I work 90 hours a week? Well, heck I do. When the need arrives, I sleep four to five hours every night. And for months on an end. Has that harmed or helped me? I love what I do so it does not seem like work at all. So, I guess it only helps me.
Lampoon me if you like. Troll me if you must. But I give my thumbs up to Subrahmanyan.
Just a little note of caution to Subrahmanyan: you could have gone a bit easy when you spoke about “staring at the wife. “
There’s a phrase that I keep in mind: “Hell hath no fury like a woman scorned.”
I won’t ask Subrahmanyan how his spouse reacted when he got home that night of the conversation when he referred to “staring at the wife.”
If they are a well-adjusted couple, who understand each other, probably there was no reaction or maybe a laugh from the wife as she gave it back to him playfully.
If their relationship is not sorted – like many an Indian marriage is not (it’s a hollow marriage where the husband sleeps in a room and the wife in another and they quarrel all the time or give each other the cold shoulder) then he would have got hell. And he might well still be getting it.
I would like to believe that his is the first type of marriage mentioned above. After all he is an engineer, and engineers calculate everything they do.
Both he and his wife are probably having a sound sleep while a large part of corporate India, employees and the media rage about the “ninety hour work week” and about “not staring at the wife.”
MUMBAI: 2025 will be remembered as the year India’s OTT industry stopped chasing scale for its own sake and began reckoning with how audiences actually consume content. Completion rates fell, patience wore thin and the limits of long-form excess became impossible to ignore. In this guest column, Pratap Jain, founder and CEO of ChanaJor, traces how micro-drama moved from the fringes to the centre of viewing behaviour, why short-form fiction emerged as a retention engine rather than a trend, and how platforms that respected time, habit and emotional payoff were the ones that truly grew up in 2025.
If there is one thing 2025 will be remembered for in the Indian OTT industry, it’s this: the industry finally stopped pretending.
Stopped pretending that bigger automatically meant better.
Stopped pretending that viewers had endless time.
Stopped pretending that scale without retention was success.
What began as a quiet reset in 2023 and a cautious correction in 2024 turned into a very visible shift in 2025. Business models matured. Content strategies tightened. And most importantly, platforms started aligning themselves with how Indians actually watch content, not how the industry wished they would.
At the centre of this shift was micro-drama—not as a trend, but as a behavioural inevitability.
When OTT finally understood the time problem
For years, long episodes were treated as a marker of seriousness. A 45–60 minute runtime was almost a badge of credibility. Shorter formats were pushed to the margins, labelled as “snack content” or “mobile-only.”
That belief quietly collapsed in 2025.
What platform data showed very clearly was not a drop in interest—but a drop in patience. Viewers weren’t rejecting stories. They were rejecting commitment.
Across platforms, the same patterns appeared:
* First-episode drop-offs on long-form shows kept increasing
* Completion rates continued to slide
* Viewers were sampling more titles but finishing fewer
At the same time, shows with episodes in the six to 10 minute range started showing the opposite behaviour: higher completion, higher repeat viewing, and stronger daily habit formation.
Micro-drama didn’t win because it was short. It won because it respected time.
Micro-Drama didn’t arrive loudly. It took over quietly.
There was no single moment when micro-drama “launched” in India. It crept in through dashboards and retention charts.
By mid-2025, it was clear that viewers were happy watching four, five, sometimes six short episodes in one sitting—even when they wouldn’t finish a single long episode. Romance, relationship drama, slice-of-life conflict, and grounded comedy worked especially well.
This wasn’t disposable content. It was compressed storytelling.
In shorter formats, there was no room for indulgence. Every episode had to move the story forward. Weak writing was punished faster. Strong writing was rewarded immediately.
Micro-drama raised the bar instead of lowering it.
Where ChanaJor naturally fit into this shift
ChanaJor didn’t pivot to micro-drama in 2025 because the market demanded it. In many ways, the platform was already built around the same viewing behaviour.
From the beginning, ChanaJor focused on short-to-mid-length fictional stories that felt close to everyday Indian life—hostels, rented flats, office romances, small-town relationships, young people figuring things out. Stories that didn’t need heavy context or cinematic scale to connect.
What worked in ChanaJor’s favour in 2025 was clarity:
* A clearly defined audience
* Tight episode lengths
* Storytelling that prioritised emotion and pace over spectacle
While several platforms rushed to copy global micro-drama formats, ChanaJor stayed rooted in familiar Indian settings and conflicts. That familiarity mattered. Viewers didn’t have to “enter” the world of the show—it already felt like theirs.
Why audiences started responding differently
One of the biggest misconceptions going into 2025 was that audiences wanted shorter content because their attention spans had reduced. That wasn’t entirely true.
What viewers actually wanted was meaningful payoff per minute.
On platforms like ChanaJor, episodes didn’t waste time setting the mood for ten minutes. Conflicts arrived early. Characters were recognisable within moments. Emotional hooks landed fast.
A typical consumption pattern looked like real life:
* One episode during a break
* Two more before sleeping
* A few the next day
This is how viewing habits are built—not through marketing spends, but through comfort and consistency.
Viewers came back not because every show was a blockbuster, but because they knew what kind of experience to expect.
2025 was also the year OTT faced business reality
The other big change in 2025 was on the business side. Subscriber growth slowed. Discounts stopped hiding churn. Customer acquisition costs rose.
Platforms were forced to ask harder questions:
* Are viewers finishing what they start?
* Are they returning without reminders?
* Is this content worth what we’re spending on it?
This is where micro-drama began outperforming expectations. A well-written short series could deliver sustained engagement without massive budgets. It didn’t peak for one weekend and disappear—it stayed alive through repeat viewing.
Platforms like ChanaJor benefited because they weren’t chasing inflated launch numbers. The focus was on consistency and retention, not noise.
Failures Became Visible Faster
2025 also exposed weaknesses brutally.
Several platforms assumed micro-drama was a shortcut—short episodes, quick shoots, instant traction. What they discovered was that bad writing fails faster in short formats than in long ones.
Viewers dropped off within minutes. Episodes were abandoned mid-way. Weak stories had nowhere to hide.
Micro-drama didn’t forgive laziness. It amplified it.
The platforms that survived were the ones that treated short storytelling with the same seriousness as long-form—sometimes more.
OTT Stopped Chasing Prestige and Started Chasing Habit
Perhaps the most important shift in 2025 wasn’t technical or creative—it was psychological.
OTT stopped trying to look like cinema. It stopped chasing validation through scale and awards alone. It began behaving like what it actually is in people’s lives: a daily companion.
Platforms like ChanaJor found their space here because that mindset was already baked in. The goal wasn’t to dominate a weekend launch. It was to quietly become part of someone’s everyday viewing routine.
That shift changed everything—from release strategies to how success was measured.
What 2025 Ultimately Taught the Industry
By the end of the year, three truths were impossible to ignore:
* Time is the most valuable thing a viewer gives you
* Retention matters more than reach
* Format must follow behaviour, not ego
Micro-drama didn’t take over because it was fashionable. It took over because it fit real life.
Looking Ahead
Micro-drama is not replacing long-form storytelling. It is redefining the baseline of engagement.
Longer shows will survive—but only when they earn their length. Short-form fiction will continue to evolve, becoming sharper, more emotionally confident, and better written.
Platforms like ChanaJor have shown that it’s possible to grow without shouting—by understanding the audience, respecting their time, and telling stories that feel real.
2025 wasn’t the year OTT became smaller. It was the year it became smarter.
Note: The views expressed in this article are solely the author’s and do not necessarily reflect our own.
