eNews
Yas Island Abu Dhabi to host Diljit Dosanjh’s ‘Dil-Luminati Tour’ on 9 November
Mumbai: Yas Island Abu Dhabi, the region’s leading leisure and entertainment destination, will welcome Punjabi music icon Diljit Dosanjh to Etihad Park on 9 November 2024, as part of the eagerly awaited Dil-Luminati Tour. Saregama and Ripple Effect Studios have partnered with the Department of Culture and Tourism – Abu Dhabi, and Miral, the leading creator of immersive destinations and experiences in Abu Dhabi to bring this eagerly anticipated concert to the UAE. The event is proudly presented by Emirates NBD.
Diljit Dosanjh, a global music sensation who recently made history as the first Indian artist on ‘The Tonight Show with Jimmy Fallon’ and the first Punjabi artist at Coachella, is bringing his electrifying Dil-Luminati tour to the UAE this November. Following record-breaking shows in North America, and with upcoming performances in the UK in September, Europe in October and India in Oct-Dec, Diljit is set to captivate audiences with his unparalleled talent.
Diljit Dosanjh on his upcoming show in UAE said, “I am beyond excited to bring the Dil-Luminati Tour to Abu Dhabi for the very first time. This is something I’ve been looking forward to, and I can’t wait to share the magic with my fans at Etihad Park. I’m ready for an unforgettable night of music and celebration because Punjabi UAE aa gaye oye!! I am incredibly humbled by the overwhelming love and support I’ve received from fans across the world. I promise to continue working hard to bring you the best music experience and create something truly special on stage. I encourage you all to bring your energy and enthusiasm because Abu Dhabi, we’re going to make this night extraordinary!”
Saregama India Ltd Sr vice president – films, events & A&R Siddharth Anand Kumar said, “We are beyond excited to bring Diljit Dosanjh’s Dil-Luminati Tour to Yas Island, Abu Dhabi, marking his debut performance in the city. Diljit is a global sensation and his ability to connect with audiences is incredible. At Saregama, we are committed to delivering world-class entertainment experiences, and this concert, just like the ones we’ve produced across North America, Australia and India is set to be a milestone event. We look forward to creating an immersive and spectacular experience for fans, in partnership with the Department of Culture and Tourism – Abu Dhabi and Miral.”
Ripple Effect Studios founder & Diljit Dosanjh’s business manager Sonali said, “Working with Diljit on the Dil-Luminati Tour has been an extraordinary experience. His passion for his craft and his dedication to his fans are truly inspiring. Bringing this tour to Yas Island, Abu Dhabi, for the first time ever, is a momentous occasion, and we are excited to see how the energy of the UAE will resonate with Diljit’s electrifying performances. We’re committed to making this show an unforgettable experience for everyone involved.”
Yas Island has a proven track record of hosting global superstars, from the Backstreet Boys and Guns N’ Roses to Amr Diab. This impressive legacy sets the stage for Diljit Dosanjh’s Dil-Luminati Tour, promising an unforgettable experience for fans as the latest addition to the venue’s star-studded lineup.
Pre-registration is now live from www.platinumlist.net with the public pre-sale for registered users from Tuesday, 27 August 12 noon UAE time.
Emirates NBD customers will have an exclusive early access pre-sale on Monday, 26 August from noon UAE time.
The public general sale will commence on Wednesday, 28 August at 12 noon UAE time.
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.
