eNews
OneIndia.com launches bilingual web platform OneArabia.me
Mumbai: OneIndia.com, a leading vernacular web destination in India that attracts an impressive audience of over 200 million monthly users across its network sites, announces its strategic expansion into the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region with the launch of
OneArabia.me. More than just a content hub, this innovative bilingual platform, available in both Arabic and English, is designed to cater to the cultural and interest-based needs of readers in the MENA region. The digital platform aims to bridge gaps and foster cultural exchange by providing a space for diverse voices, perspectives, and stories from across the region, encouraging dialogue and meaningful engagement.
To ensure a robust presence in the MENA market, the OneArabia project is being spearheaded by BMEG ME, a Dubai-based firm. Under the leadership of BMEG ME director and general manager Shekhar Iyer, a comprehensive go-to-market strategy is being implemented to introduce the new bilingual platform to the MENA audience.
Speaking about the launch of OneArabia, BMEG ME director and general manager Shekhar Iyer stated, “OneArabia is set to redefine the digital media landscape in the MENA region. Its focus on diverse and curated content is a bold move, much like choosing courage over comfort. It’s a calculated risk, but one that we believe will pay off by making OneArabia a go-to web platform for readers.
Moreover, partnering with BMEG ME gives OneArabia a strategic edge. This partnership affords OneArabia a deeper understanding of the local market dynamics, thereby enabling us to provide advertisers with more targeted solutions. The valuable insights we derive from this association will also shape OneArabia’s future content strategy, ensuring our offerings remain relevant and engaging for the readers across the MENA region.”
OneIndia CEO Ravanan Natarajan, expressed his excitement and vision for this new venture, stating, “The launch of OneArabia is not just another milestone in OneIndia’s journey, but a significant leap marking our first international venture. As we step into the vibrant digital landscape of the MENA region with our partners at BMEG ME, we are driven by a vision to overcome language barriers, enhance cultural dialogue, and provide a platform that caters to a diverse range of interests. We are particularly pleased to elevate Jobo Kuruvilla to business head, international markets. His over a decade of experience in vernacular digital web content will be invaluable as we continue on our growth trajectory. This platform will not only add value for our readers but also offer unique opportunities for advertisers.”
As part of the content strategy, OneArabia offers a rich selection of content spanning multiple sectors including regional & international news, business, technology, lifestyle, sports, automotive, travel, and more. Whether you’re an Entrepreneur seeking critical insights, a Tech Pro keen on staying updated with the latest trends, a travel connoisseur looking for captivating destinations, or a motorhead on the trail of the latest automotive updates, OneArabia has something for everyone.
Further enhancing the user experience, the bilingual web platform is powered by OneIndia and utilizes advanced machine learning and WISE, an in-house developed progressive generative AI, which is being widely adopted by publishers and marketers alike. This technology allows OneArabia’s editorial team, spread across MENA and South Asia, to curate and deliver custom content that aligns with the individual preferences and interests of the diverse reader base.
OneIndia’s business head for international markets Jobo Kuruvilla, outlined a bold vision for OneArabia: “We’re not just another news portal. We’re the pacesetters. By leveraging the rich linguistic diversity of the MENA region, we’re reaching out to a broader audience with curated content in both Arabic and English. Our aim? To build an informed, engaged community.
Our global footprint offers unique opportunities for advertisers, setting us apart from traditional platforms. But it’s more than just about advertising – it’s about creating a comprehensive resource that promotes meaningful engagement.
OneArabia is the latest bilingual platform in the MENA region, and we’re inviting everyone to come and explore what we have to offer. Through our platform, we’re promoting a symbiotic relationship where everyone – from users to advertisers – benefits. The key to this approach is to maintain a balance that keeps all participants content, creating a harmonious ecosystem where mutual exchange of value leads to collective engagement.”
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.
