The two-minute binge: Why India is a booming market for microdramas

Not long ago, binge-watching meant clearing your evening for a Netflix series. Today, millions of Indians are squeezing entire seasons into the spaces between everything else. This is the world of short videos and microdrama: fast-paced, “snackable” stories told in episodes that last about as long as it takes to sip a cup of morning chai.

The numbers suggest this is more than a passing fad. The biggest players in the space, like Kuku and Pocket, generate hundreds of millions of dollars in revenue from India. The audience is vast and varied, with viewers coming from both Tier 1 and Tier 2 India, across genders and age groups. 

In some ways, India was always fertile ground for the format. We have spent decades watching sprawling television serials where families feud for hundreds of episodes and characters occasionally return from the dead. Cinema gave us much the same appetite for heightened emotion. Microdrama takes that familiar appetite for serialised storytelling and gives it a new form. The viewing habit is broader than the medium might suggest too. This isn’t simply Gen Z scrolling between reels. Older audiences are watching as well.

The boom began in China and travelled through markets such as Korea before taking off in India. The Indian market is now producing a growing amount of original content of its own, much of it reflecting recognisable Indian aspirations.

Rags to riches, romance, and revenge stand out as genres. Someone overlooked turns out to be fabulously wealthy, the ordinary person falls for an impossibly powerful figure, and fortunes reverse quickly and dramatically. The aspiration isn’t particularly subtle, and it doesn’t need to be. These plots reflect familiar anxieties around class and social mobility, but with the payoff arriving almost immediately.

In a country like India, the fantasy of radically changing your circumstances has resonance when millions of people are doing exactly that. There really is an element of the classic Ekta Kapoor serial here, except the entire emotional cycle might unfold while you’re waiting for a train. There is also something refreshing about the lack of embarrassment. Microdramas are happy to be excessive. They don’t need to apologise for an absurd plot twist since the point is to make you feel something quickly and come back for the next episode. For audiences raised on Indian television, that grammar is hardly unfamiliar.

The short-form element is part of the appeal for many, like users such as Anandita Anand, head of marketing, Angel’s Share LLP. “I find microdramas very entertaining because they are so easy to consume. They aren’t something I have to concentrate or invest too much time in, they’re just random entertaining little stories that I can watch without using too much brain power,” she says. “Knowing I don’t have to commit to a full movie or a series makes it very easy to get hooked for a few minutes, enjoy the story, and then move on with my day.” 

The content can also get remarkably local. Production houses like ChaiShots have learnt that cultural specificity and regional nuance matter. Content made for south Indian audiences can have its own idioms and cultural cues rather than feeling like a Hindi show translated into another language. The underlying themes can travel without sanding away what makes the setting distinctive.

Producers of traditional films are skeptical. “Like everything else, microdramas are the sign of our times,” says Nikhil Dwivedi, producer of films such as ‘Dabangg 3’, ‘CTRL’, and ‘Bandar’. “My fear is it will be something like 20:20 in cricket; once we get used to it, even an odd 50-over match will end up being too much. We are moving towards 60-minute features soon.”

Producer Tanuj Garg, the name behind films such as ‘Tumhari Sulu’ and ‘Looop Lapeta’ agrees. “India’s microdrama space is still in the exploratory phase. Unlike markets in South Korea, we don’t yet have a proven, scalable model that demonstrates long-term success. To a large extent, we are borrowing from global playbooks and attempting to adapt them to Indian consumer behaviour – so right now, the ecosystem is still in the trial-and error mode,” he avers.  

There is a different economy that powers microdramas. Many platforms let viewers begin a series for free before putting later episodes behind a subscription or paywall. This gives the cliffhanger another job: each episode has to convince you that finding out what happens next is worth paying for. Global players like

DramaBox and ReelShort have perfected the model, with weekly subscriptions that can cost as much as an annual Prime subscription.

Years of reels and other short-form videos have already made mobile viewing completely ordinary in India. Paying for entertainment on a phone isn’t particularly novel either. Microdrama arrived at a moment when both behaviours were already established.

In a country that has never been short of stories, microdramas have just found new spaces in which to tell them.

Shagun Shah is a video game developer turned investor.