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India’s micro-drama boom is rewriting the OTT playbook
DELHI: At 1 AM, 23-year-old Priya Sharma is glued to her phone, bingeing a revenge thriller in 90-second episodes. She is far from alone. Over 80 million Indians are now hooked on micro-dramas, bite-sized, mobile-first narratives that are turning India’s OTT industry on its head.
Vikrant Khanna, founder and CEO of Mogi I/O, calls it India’s latest entertainment gold rush. In a LinkedIn post, Khanna wrote that a Re 1 trial can quickly turn into Re 300-plus monthly spends, and that the biggest battle for attention is no longer on TV screens but in the palm of the hand.
The market is crowded and fiercely competitive. More than ten platforms are vying for viewers, each with a different strategy. Some are chasing volume, Netflix-style. Others are going cinematic, HBO-style. A few are spending twice the traditional TV budgets on vertical-first content. Talent is following the money, with TV stars and Bollywood actors increasingly headlining micro-dramas, drawn by creative freedom and strong paychecks.
Pricing psychology is driving engagement. Platforms charge Re 1 for a seven-day trial, leveraging cliffhangers, emotional hooks and multiple storylines to convert casual viewers into paying subscribers. Many users come for a single show and stay for months.
China’s micro-drama market offers a blueprint, growing from $500 million in 2021 to $9 billion in 2025. India has the advantage of a larger population, mobile-first behaviour and a deep daily-soap culture. Tier 2 and Tier 3 cities are expected to fuel the next phase of growth.
Content itself is evolving. While early micro-dramas focused on romance, family drama and revenge, high-octane action is now moving vertical, with large casts, real stunts and cinematic ambition. Episodes remain under 60 seconds, dropped daily, but series span 30–45 minutes cumulatively — a new kind of daily soap designed for habit, not appointment viewing.
Khanna stresses that micro-dramas are more than a trend. They are a business model shift — built for mobile, monetised through emotion rather than subscriptions, and increasingly powered by AI and data. For viewers like Priya in Lucknow, scrolling at 1 AM is already normal. For creators, investors and platforms, the micro-drama moment is only just beginning.
Vikrant Khanna is a seasoned P&L leader and entrepreneur with rich experience across FMCG, telecom, virtual retail and Internet businesses. He founded Mogi I/O, a B2B video-tech venture that compresses video size by up to 50 per cent while streaming buffer-free, high-quality content. Mogi leverages these IPs to provide no-code video apps across mobile, web and TV, helping OTTs, broadcasters, publishers and edtech platforms monetise content efficiently.
Before Mogi, Khanna launched BoomAGift, a gifting-on-the-go app for low-ticket items, which has since pivoted into Mogi. He also held leadership roles at Homeshop18 as COO and at Bharti Airtel, where he led youth marketing campaigns, digital strategy and the sponsorship of India’s first Formula 1 Grand Prix.
India’s OTT future, Khanna says, may no longer be written in hours. It could be written in 60-second episodes.
eNews
PNB partners Kiwi to launch credit-enabled UPI for users
Targets 180 million customers; RuPay card offers 0.5 per cent to 1.5 per cent cashback
MUMBAI: Swipe, tap, or scan credit is quietly slipping into the rhythm of everyday payments, and Punjab National Bank wants in on the action. The state-run lender has partnered with Kiwi to roll out credit-enabled UPI payments for its 180 million customers, marking a significant push to blend traditional banking with India’s fast-evolving digital payments ecosystem.
At the centre of the collaboration is the launch of the PNB Kiwi Credit Card on the RuPay network. The card is designed with a digital-first approach, offering fully online onboarding and seamless integration with UPI, allowing users to transact via scan-and-pay while accessing credit.
The offering also brings in a rewards layer, with cashback ranging from 0.5 per cent to 1.5 per cent on online transactions, positioning the product as both a convenience play and a spending incentive.
The move comes as UPI continues to dominate India’s digital payments landscape, increasingly blurring the lines between debit-led transactions and credit access. For PNB, which operates over 10,000 branches around 60 per cent in semi-urban and rural areas, the partnership signals a targeted effort to extend formal credit to segments that have traditionally remained underserved.
The collaboration also reflects a broader industry shift, where banks and fintech platforms are converging to embed credit directly into payment flows, reducing friction while expanding access.
With RuPay credit cards gaining traction and UPI evolving beyond peer-to-peer transfers, the PNB–Kiwi tie-up positions both players at the intersection of scale, accessibility, and the next phase of digital finance in India.
