Comment
Column-Policy Cross-Connections
Point 1: With over 1.2 billion population, India is a dream market for any product or service. In short, a land of opportunities.
Point 2: Despite economic liberalisation started in early 1990s and followed through by successive governments, including the present one in New Delhi, India is still termed a challenging market.
Just like any other sector, India’s INR 1,157 billion media and entertainment (M&E) industry too gets affected by the two aforementioned points.
That the M&E industry holds immense potential can be easily seen in various crystal-ball gazing done.
Indian Government Economic Survey 2016, an annual report card for Indian economy released every February, states the M&E recorded “unprecedented growth” over the last two decades making it one of the fastest growing industries in India. It is projected to grow at a CAGR of 13.9 percent to reach INR 1964 billion by 2019, the Survey states, adding digital advertising and gaming are projected to drive the growth of this sector in the coming years.
The FICCI-KPMG annual report on Indian M&E sector, released in March, also reiterates the optimism. According to the report, the sector is expected to be worth INR 2,260 billion by 2020 and the advertising sector grew by 14.7 percent from INR 414 billion in 2014 to INR 475 billion in 2015.
But then what’s holding back big bang investments not only from Indian investors but also foreign ones? Especially when China, the only other market in Asia that outstrips India in terms of size and opportunities, is mostly closed for foreign investors with stringent rules relating to M&E sectors.
My theory is that despite successive governments from 1990 (it was in 1991 that economic liberalisation was set in motion in India and Indians also got exposed to satellite TV in few years from then) following up on that, full benefits have failed to accrue to the country. Reason? Various liberalisation processes and easing norms of doing business get enmeshed with other policy decisions— some taken in isolation — thereby continuing to make India a challenging market.
Take, for example, the much talked about government step in June in liberalising FDI investment norms for various sectors, including media, defence, pharmaceuticals and retail.
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FDI policy on broadcasting carriage services as of June 2016
Sector/Activity |
New Cap and Route |
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5.2.7.1.1 (1)Teleports(setting up of up-linking Hubs/Teleports); (2)Direct to Home (DTH); (3)Cable Networks (Multi System operators (MSOs) operating at National or State or District level and undertaking upgradation of networks towards digitalization and addressability); (4)Mobile TV; (5)Headend-in-the Sky Broadcasting Service(HITS) |
100%
Automatic |
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5.2.7.1.2 Cable Networks (Other MSOs not undertaking upgradation of networks towards digitalization and addressability and Local Cable Operators (LCOs)) |
|
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Infusion of fresh foreign investment, beyond 49% in a company not seeking license/permission from sectoral Ministry, resulting in change in the ownership pattern or transfer of stake by existing investor to new foreign investor, will require FIPB approval (Source: Commerce Ministry)
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The government in June said that FDI in all broadcast carriage services like cable, MSO, DTH, mobile TV, HITS have been upped to 100 percent and brought under automatic route, which means bureaucratic and lengthy permission processes have been lessened.
Small caveat in automatic route investment norms notwithstanding, Indian companies and foreign investors should have been popping the champagne bottles. But industry reactions were sober to the extent of being subdued.
General analysis of the aforementioned decision, in short, was: the government took a big step, but not a giant one. Why?
According to government data, total FDI flow into India since April 2000 to December 2015 stood at US$ 408.68 billion. But the media sector’s share of FDI inflows from 2000-2015 was pegged at $4.48 billion.
Considering the burgeoning media industry and newer technologies coming in, this sector’s share of FDI during this 15-year period should have been higher.
So, why are foreign investors hesitant in investing in India, especially when PM Modi’s dream of Digital India can dovetail into building digital infrastructure capable of delivering many media services?
The federal government may be trying its best to ease norms of doing business in India and live up to its claim of ‘India being a fav destination for foreign investors’, other proposed and existing policy decisions not only send out confused signals, but, actually, create more impediments.
Take, for example, broadcast carriage regulator TRAI’s two discussion papers on infrastructure sharing in TV broadcasting distribution and set-top-box interoperability .
TRAI’s contentions for floating these discussion subjects are to explore avenues to reduce expenditure of companies providing these services by doing away with duplication (in the first case) and examine whether interoperable STBs can largely benefit the consumers.
Critics of both these TRAI discussion subjects opine that if followed through and converted into regulations, both measures could add another layer of restrictions on the industry.
Hong Kong-based Asian media industry organisation CASBAA, which also has Indian members, doesn’t mince words when it said in its submission on STB interoperability that the TRAI paper was based on a “number of untested, unproven presuppositions concerning the practice of technical interoperability”.
Countering TRAI assertions, CASBAA said, “Regulator-imposed technical interoperability requirements will impose very large burdens on Indian consumers and industry players and risk stifling innovation in development of new features of interest to consumers.”
If a holistic view is taken of both the TRAI consultations, surprisingly aimed at bringing down media services to a common denominator having little USPs, it’s no wonder the likes of Comcast and Liberty Media or closer home the Hong Kong-headquartered PCCW, for instance, have not been enthused much to invest in Indian broadcast carriage segment despite FDI norms liberalisation and a whopping over 100 million TV homes still on the plate.
It’s not only TRAI, but also the general layout of the taxation and financial environment, apart from other cross-media restrictions, which would deter foreign investors.
A DTH service provider in India, for example, on an average pays 40 percent tax, including an annual 10 percent licence fee, while ARPUs range between INR 175-220 for most of the six DTH companies. Why would AT&T, parent company of American DirecTV, invest in a DTH operation in India?
Or, for that matter, why would Comcast or PCCW invest in Indian cable TV distribution when a large number of LCO operations are still far from transparent?
Add to that a slowing down of the digital rollout — the earlier two phases of the proposed four-phased digitisation of TV services did manage to bring about increased transparency resulting in higher tax revenues for the government — and you have a pitch that’s not conducive for fair foreign investment game.
Singapore-based market media market research company Media Partners Asia estimates approximately $2 billion has been invested by strategic and foreign institutional investors in Indian pay-TV distribution platforms, which certainly is peanuts considering over 250 million TV homes are target consumers.
If confusing policy signals were not enough, stellar performer ISRO’s new-found love for Make In India and resultant insistence on weaning away all Indian users of satellite-based services from foreign satellites to INSAT — informal as of now but gaining currency — is also fodder to scare a foreign investor as such moves smack of throwback to pre-90s when India was dubbed a closed market and not an open economy.
That’s why, I would insist, till systematic changes are brought about in the country and various government organisations and regulators also see the big picture on regulations instead of functioning within their own small islands, attempts by any Indian government to make India the most favoured destination for foreign investments will not bear ripened fruit. And, in the process, full benefits won’t accrue to the consumers.
(1 USD= INR 67)
(Anjan Mitra is Consulting Editor of Indiantelevision.com and will write a fortnightly column on media matters.)
MUMBAI: 2025 will be remembered as the year India’s OTT industry stopped chasing scale for its own sake and began reckoning with how audiences actually consume content. Completion rates fell, patience wore thin and the limits of long-form excess became impossible to ignore. In this guest column, Pratap Jain, founder and CEO of ChanaJor, traces how micro-drama moved from the fringes to the centre of viewing behaviour, why short-form fiction emerged as a retention engine rather than a trend, and how platforms that respected time, habit and emotional payoff were the ones that truly grew up in 2025.
If there is one thing 2025 will be remembered for in the Indian OTT industry, it’s this: the industry finally stopped pretending.
Stopped pretending that bigger automatically meant better.
Stopped pretending that viewers had endless time.
Stopped pretending that scale without retention was success.
What began as a quiet reset in 2023 and a cautious correction in 2024 turned into a very visible shift in 2025. Business models matured. Content strategies tightened. And most importantly, platforms started aligning themselves with how Indians actually watch content, not how the industry wished they would.
At the centre of this shift was micro-drama—not as a trend, but as a behavioural inevitability.
When OTT finally understood the time problem
For years, long episodes were treated as a marker of seriousness. A 45–60 minute runtime was almost a badge of credibility. Shorter formats were pushed to the margins, labelled as “snack content” or “mobile-only.”
That belief quietly collapsed in 2025.
What platform data showed very clearly was not a drop in interest—but a drop in patience. Viewers weren’t rejecting stories. They were rejecting commitment.
Across platforms, the same patterns appeared:
* First-episode drop-offs on long-form shows kept increasing
* Completion rates continued to slide
* Viewers were sampling more titles but finishing fewer
At the same time, shows with episodes in the six to 10 minute range started showing the opposite behaviour: higher completion, higher repeat viewing, and stronger daily habit formation.
Micro-drama didn’t win because it was short. It won because it respected time.
Micro-Drama didn’t arrive loudly. It took over quietly.
There was no single moment when micro-drama “launched” in India. It crept in through dashboards and retention charts.
By mid-2025, it was clear that viewers were happy watching four, five, sometimes six short episodes in one sitting—even when they wouldn’t finish a single long episode. Romance, relationship drama, slice-of-life conflict, and grounded comedy worked especially well.
This wasn’t disposable content. It was compressed storytelling.
In shorter formats, there was no room for indulgence. Every episode had to move the story forward. Weak writing was punished faster. Strong writing was rewarded immediately.
Micro-drama raised the bar instead of lowering it.
Where ChanaJor naturally fit into this shift
ChanaJor didn’t pivot to micro-drama in 2025 because the market demanded it. In many ways, the platform was already built around the same viewing behaviour.
From the beginning, ChanaJor focused on short-to-mid-length fictional stories that felt close to everyday Indian life—hostels, rented flats, office romances, small-town relationships, young people figuring things out. Stories that didn’t need heavy context or cinematic scale to connect.
What worked in ChanaJor’s favour in 2025 was clarity:
* A clearly defined audience
* Tight episode lengths
* Storytelling that prioritised emotion and pace over spectacle
While several platforms rushed to copy global micro-drama formats, ChanaJor stayed rooted in familiar Indian settings and conflicts. That familiarity mattered. Viewers didn’t have to “enter” the world of the show—it already felt like theirs.
Why audiences started responding differently
One of the biggest misconceptions going into 2025 was that audiences wanted shorter content because their attention spans had reduced. That wasn’t entirely true.
What viewers actually wanted was meaningful payoff per minute.
On platforms like ChanaJor, episodes didn’t waste time setting the mood for ten minutes. Conflicts arrived early. Characters were recognisable within moments. Emotional hooks landed fast.
A typical consumption pattern looked like real life:
* One episode during a break
* Two more before sleeping
* A few the next day
This is how viewing habits are built—not through marketing spends, but through comfort and consistency.
Viewers came back not because every show was a blockbuster, but because they knew what kind of experience to expect.
2025 was also the year OTT faced business reality
The other big change in 2025 was on the business side. Subscriber growth slowed. Discounts stopped hiding churn. Customer acquisition costs rose.
Platforms were forced to ask harder questions:
* Are viewers finishing what they start?
* Are they returning without reminders?
* Is this content worth what we’re spending on it?
This is where micro-drama began outperforming expectations. A well-written short series could deliver sustained engagement without massive budgets. It didn’t peak for one weekend and disappear—it stayed alive through repeat viewing.
Platforms like ChanaJor benefited because they weren’t chasing inflated launch numbers. The focus was on consistency and retention, not noise.
Failures Became Visible Faster
2025 also exposed weaknesses brutally.
Several platforms assumed micro-drama was a shortcut—short episodes, quick shoots, instant traction. What they discovered was that bad writing fails faster in short formats than in long ones.
Viewers dropped off within minutes. Episodes were abandoned mid-way. Weak stories had nowhere to hide.
Micro-drama didn’t forgive laziness. It amplified it.
The platforms that survived were the ones that treated short storytelling with the same seriousness as long-form—sometimes more.
OTT Stopped Chasing Prestige and Started Chasing Habit
Perhaps the most important shift in 2025 wasn’t technical or creative—it was psychological.
OTT stopped trying to look like cinema. It stopped chasing validation through scale and awards alone. It began behaving like what it actually is in people’s lives: a daily companion.
Platforms like ChanaJor found their space here because that mindset was already baked in. The goal wasn’t to dominate a weekend launch. It was to quietly become part of someone’s everyday viewing routine.
That shift changed everything—from release strategies to how success was measured.
What 2025 Ultimately Taught the Industry
By the end of the year, three truths were impossible to ignore:
* Time is the most valuable thing a viewer gives you
* Retention matters more than reach
* Format must follow behaviour, not ego
Micro-drama didn’t take over because it was fashionable. It took over because it fit real life.
Looking Ahead
Micro-drama is not replacing long-form storytelling. It is redefining the baseline of engagement.
Longer shows will survive—but only when they earn their length. Short-form fiction will continue to evolve, becoming sharper, more emotionally confident, and better written.
Platforms like ChanaJor have shown that it’s possible to grow without shouting—by understanding the audience, respecting their time, and telling stories that feel real.
2025 wasn’t the year OTT became smaller. It was the year it became smarter.
Note: The views expressed in this article are solely the author’s and do not necessarily reflect our own.
