iWorld
Why Uday Sodhi launched Liv Kids
MUMBAI: First there was VootKids from the Viacom18 stable. And now Sony Pictures Networks India’s OTT service SonyLiv is tip-toeing into the kids entertainment space with the launch of its video on demand service Liv Kids.
The content on the section features popular nursery rhymes like Pop Goes the Weasel, Twinkle Twinkle Little Star, Humpty Dumpty, Wheels on the Bus, etc. The section currently boasts 100+ videos (shows and rhymes) in English and Hindi free of cost and plans to add substantial amount of content around kids in sometime. The idea is to add more regional languages later apart from interesting kids content from international producers over time.
“We studied the content consumption pattern of kids on various platforms like YouTube and in several international markets. The content that the kids use, time-spent and their loyalty towards that particular content which makes them come back to it again and again is great. It is higher than the consumption by our other normal users. The stickiness is very high. With the category offering an exciting range of nursery rhymes which are both fun and informative, we are confident that our younger audience will enjoy our latest addition to the fullest,” says SonyLiv EVP and head digital business Uday Sodhi.
Though the platform does not have sponsors as yet, it is confident that advertisers will get on board pretty soon. Currently, run of site (ROS) ads can be viewed on the kids section.
“The audience is very sensitive and the market is huge. With the penetration of internet in India getting higher, the kids segment is only set to grow. Once they get hooked, the content consumption will keep increasing. As far as advertisers are concerned, we do not want to put content or advertisements which do not fit completely in this space,” adds Sodhi.
The videos can be viewed on SonyLiv’s website and mobile application, as well as on its YouTube channel.
Being fast adopters of technology, kids are the first ones to become the digital consumers which often worry their parents. Digital streaming services like YouTube Kids and Voot, have come up with various parental control features so that they can keep an eye on what is searched by the child, timers to limit screen time and content restrictions.
Though, Liv does not offer any such options as of yet mainly due to its kids oriented content, it will develop such options if there is a need. “It is too early for us to say whether we will have such options or how many hours of content will we have. If there is feedback, which we think can be applied to our platform, we will,” asserts Sodhi.
As far as promotions are concerned, Sodhi opined that the conversations have already started and the OTT service will soon launch a complete marketing plan though he was chary of revealing any details.
“SonyLiv’s commitment to providing the best and most relevant user-centric entertainment content is the reason behind the launch of Liv Kids. We are very hopeful of this and will see how this turns out to be for us,” concluded Sodhi.
He surely isn’t kidding!
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.
