eNews
Mountain River Films partners with China Intercontinental Communication Centre
Mumbai: Mountain River Films (MRF), a trailblazer in international sales and distribution, has forged a partnership with the China Intercontinental Communication Centre (CICC), marking a historic moment for the Indian content industry. This alliance solidified after a year of meticulous negotiations, represents the first collaboration of its kind between CICC and any organisation from the SAARC region.
The official signing ceremony took place on 23 August 2024, at the CICC headquarters in Beijing, China. This momentous event was graced by the presence of high-ranking Chinese officials and industry leaders, underscoring the significance of this alliance, along with Chandra K Jha, an expert and well-known name in international film distribution and CEO of Mountain River Films.
This partnership marks a significant step for Mountain River Films in navigating international markets. At a time when the Indian content industry faces challenges, Mountain River Films aims to revive negotiations for Indian films and series in the Chinese market.
India’s content industry is growing, with more high-quality productions gaining global attention. China, a key market for Indian films, has shown renewed interest, as seen in the successes of films like Dangal, Andhadhun, and Bajrangi Bhaijaan, which collectively earned billions at the Chinese box office.
Recognising the importance of a smooth market, Mountain River Films is working to ensure Indian content succeeds in China. This agreement with CICC is intended to foster a collaborative relationship between the two countries.
Mountain River Films’ approach positions the company within the global content industry. This deal could create new opportunities for Indian filmmakers in one of the world’s largest markets.
As the Indian content industry grows, Mountain River Films remains focused on bringing Indian stories to a wider audience.
China Intercontinental Communication Centre deputy director Cui Binzhen stated, “Signing of radio and television (TV) business between two sides, opening a new chapter in media exchange and film and TV cooperation. Today, China Intercontinental Communication Centre (CICC) signed a contract with India’s Mountain River Films, jointly building a bridge to enhance people-to-people communication between China and India. We will give full play to our respective strengths, select and broadcast the freshest, most appealing documentaries, films, dramas, animations, and other programs, introduce more excellent Indian films such as “3 Idiots”, “Dangal” and other Indian movies to the Chinese audience through ‘UPanda Cinema Programme ’, enabling more Chinese and Indian audiences to enhance understanding and deepen our friendships. We also look forward to working with Mountain River Films to co-produce films and dramas with both countries’ characteristics that resonate with our people’s emotions and to promote mutual reference and integration between the two sides.”
Mountain River Films CEO Chandra K Jha stated, “As we know, India and China comprise nearly one-third of the world’s population, and we are the third largest voice in the world. China and India have set remarkable examples as global leaders in various domains. We are the largest producers, the biggest cinema markets, and significant content creators, making our collaboration unique and promising. Unfortunately, there has not been much content exchange between these two nations after COVID, but today’s signing agreement of cooperation will pave the way for more and more content exchange. I am hoping Chinese audiences can once again see beautiful movies from India, so this event is truly a historical moment and a proud moment for Mountain River Film as we are the only organization from SAARC that has entered a high level of cooperation with Intercontinental Communication Centre, which apex body in China to cooperate with major international media.”
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.
