iWorld
Content India: Indian entertainment’s power play as streaming, AI and regulation collide
MUMBAI: Move over, primetime television, the new battleground for eyeballs is digital. With smartphones doubling as multiplexes and streaming platforms serving as global entertainment highways, Indian content is having its biggest moment yet. But along with opportunities, the industry faces significant regulatory, technological, and monetisation challenges.
At Content India 2025’s Perspectives for Change session, leading industry executives, including Gaurav Banerjee (MD & CEO, Sony Pictures/Sony Liv), Jason Hafford (founder, Prototype Content), Kilian Kerwin (president, Jaya Entertainment), Roma Khanna (producer), Tanisha Khanna (lawyer, Nishith Desai Associates), and Shoojit Sircar (CEO, Rising Sun Films), discussed what’s next for Indian entertainment. One thing was clear: the rules of the game are changing, and only the agile will thrive.
Artificial Intelligence (AI) is no longer just a futuristic concept; it’s already shaping how content is produced, consumed, and monetised. AI-powered analytics are refining ad placements and content recommendations, making streaming services more personalised than ever.
“AI is a game-changer for storytelling,” said Gaurav Banerjee. “We’re now able to understand audiences at an unprecedented level. The way we create, distribute, and monetise content is evolving, and platforms that adapt quickly will dominate.”
According to industry insights, AI has led to a 15–20 per cent boost in ad revenue and pay-per-view subscriptions, improving monetisation for platforms.
Banerjee further noted how AI is addressing long-standing biases in content creation. “For years, storytelling was dominated by certain voices. AI-driven insights are now helping us correct that imbalance, ensuring more diverse representation in entertainment.”
With AI also being used to automatically translate and dub content, regional storytelling is gaining a global reach. “We’re seeing a major shift where a Tamil or Telugu film can be released worldwide with AI-driven localisation. That’s a huge leap forward,” added Kilian Kerwin.
If AI is supercharging content, regulations are defining the playground. The Indian entertainment industry is increasingly facing scrutiny, particularly in the digital space. The IT Rules and other regulatory frameworks are being challenged in court, with concerns over censorship and content liability.
This regulatory uncertainty is causing anxiety among streaming platforms. “Creative freedom is crucial,” said Roma Khanna. “At the same time, we understand the need for responsible storytelling. But what we don’t want is ambiguous laws that leave platforms and creators second-guessing what’s acceptable.”
Banerjee was more direct: “We need clear and predictable regulations. Content creators should not feel like they’re constantly walking on eggshells. Regulation should encourage creativity, not stifle it.”
While OTT platforms remain largely self-regulated, concerns about political sensitivities and legal repercussions have led to increased caution in content curation. “We have seen instances where content was pulled due to public backlash,” added Tanisha Khanna. “It’s crucial that there’s a structured, fair process in place.”
While streaming platforms are thriving, making money remains a puzzle. Subscription models have their limits, and ad-supported streaming is still evolving. However, new-age monetisation models like microtransactions, premium ad tiers, virtual goods, and gamified content experiences are gaining traction.
Banerjee shed light on the shift in viewer spending habits. “Five years ago, people were hesitant to pay for content. Now, we have 62 per cent of Indian households paying for digital entertainment. The audience values good storytelling, and they’re willing to pay for it.”
The advertising-based video-on-demand (AVOD) model is also witnessing a surge. “We saw a 40 per cent increase in AVOD revenue last year,” Banerjee revealed. “Ad-supported content isn’t just for budget-conscious viewers anymore. Even premium audiences are engaging with it.”
Interestingly, India’s vast language diversity is proving to be a monetisation goldmine. Viewers are streaming content in multiple languages, increasing the reach of regional cinema and opening new revenue streams for platforms.
“Regional content is the future,” said Shoojit Sircar. “More than 60 per cent of future content investments are going into non-Hindi programming, and for good reason. The audience is demanding authenticity, and regional storytelling delivers that in a way no other content can.”
The biggest validation of Indian entertainment’s success? Global audiences can’t get enough of it. Indian shows and films are now regularly trending in the top 10 lists on global platforms.
Platforms like Amazon Prime and Netflix are doubling down on Indian originals, and franchises such as Mirzapur, Panchayat, and Citadel: Honey Bunny are expanding their universes. In 2024 alone, Indian content trended in the top 10 worldwide every single week.
“India has always had great stories, but now we have the technology and platforms to take them global,” said Jason Hafford. “We’re no longer just exporting films, we’re shaping global content trends.”
The rise of international collaborations is also a promising sign. “We’re working with global studios, co-producing, and experimenting with formats that have never been tried before in India,” said Kilian Kerwin. “The future is cross-border storytelling.”
The future of Indian entertainment is a mix of boundless opportunity and complex challenges. AI is set to revolutionise content, but ethical concerns and biases must be addressed. Regulations will shape how platforms operate, but clarity is needed to encourage innovation. And while monetisation strategies evolve, striking the right balance between subscriptions, ads, and new revenue streams will be crucial.
For Gaurav Banerjee, the most exciting part is yet to come. “We’re only scratching the surface. With 5G rolling out, AI making content discovery seamless, and regional content driving engagement, the OTT revolution in India is far from reaching its season finale, it’s just getting started.”
With the entertainment landscape evolving faster than ever, one thing is certain – the golden age of Indian content is here, and the best is yet to come.
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.
