The VC-backed rise of micro dramas in India

Apart from Flick TV, some other startups vying for a share of the micro drama pie include Kuku FM, EloElo, Quick TV and Chai Shots. Established names such as Balaji Telefilms, Zee Entertainment and Amazon MX Player are also in the fray.

For Sharath Chandra, co-founder of Chai Shots, venturing into micro dramas was a logical step. For the last 10 years, Chandra and his co-founder, Anurag Reddy, have been churning out content—short films, web series, feature films—for their Hyderabad-based “culture company”, Chai Bisket. In January 2021, they made their first micro drama, Silently Yours—10 episodes of a minute each—that released on YouTube.

Last November, Chandra heard about the growing action in the micro drama space and felt it made sense to launch a dedicated app for such stories. Chai Bisket in July raised $5 million in seed funding from InfoEdge Ventures and General Catalyst.

Chandra intends to launch Chai Shots in August with the initial content entirely in Telugu before expanding into other languages. “The goal is to have local, vernacular content… We are creating original stories that are culturally relevant and contextually fitting,” he tells Forbes India. The idea, he continues, is to make content of at least an hour, broken down into episodes of a minute or two each. “We will start with a bank of 40 to 50 shows. At least a dozen shows are now under production, and we also have a library of 25 shows made in the past three to four years,” he adds.

Balaji Telefilms saw potential in micro dramas when it noticed content consumption rising among the Gen Zs and those residing in small towns. The company then launched Kutingg within the AltBalaji app in May to provide short and snappy content. It converted its existing IPs (intellectual property) into vertical shows and edited them crisply to fit them into the micro drama format.

“We started developing micro dramas from our existing budgets at AltBalaji. We are trying to have a cost-effective model. At the end of the day, money well spent is also money well earned. That is how we want to go,” explains Nitin Burman, group chief revenue officer at Balaji Telefilms.

Kutingg launched with around 800 minutes of content—or 800 episodes. “On a monthly basis, we are adding 600 to 800 episodes. We are also contemplating whether to buy foreign content and dub it for Indian audiences,” adds Burman. 

Sunrise Category

The investor community understands that the space is getting crowded, and that content consumption on-the-go is here to stay. VCs are, therefore, signing cheques while keeping an eye on the future. “This is a sunrise and emerging category. And with time, consumers in India will accept this wholeheartedly,” says Mayank Jain, principal at Stellaris Venture Partners, which has invested in Flick TV. “It is the best of both the worlds of short videos—Reels and Shorts—and also provides emotionally engaging storylines like a web series.”

Kitty Agarwal, partner at Info Edge Ventures, an investor in Chai Bisket, agrees. “Everything is becoming quick—commerce, content, services. We are bullish about what this changing paradigm in content is leading to,” she says. 

A MoneyConrol report in June, citing Venture Intelligence data, says micro drama OTT platforms raised $44 million across six rounds in the first half of 2025, compared to $28 million across five deals in all of 2024.

“We estimate this to be roughly a $5 billion industry in the next five years,” says Singhal of Flick TV, which has seen over 100,000 downloads so far.

The stakeholders acknowledge that this is a nascent sector and there is a long way to go. Chandra, though, is happy with the money coming in and believes it will encourage content creators. “It is the first time there is so much VC interest in the content world. It is a good segue into content for the investor community. From here, they can start funding a production house or a film later,” he says.

According to VCs, movies are a long gestation business and there is a lot of uncertainty—a Friday can decide one’s fate. “It tends to be a game of hits and misses. This is different. Micro dramas are somewhere between OTT and TikTok,” says Agarwal.

Revenue Model

Flick TV, which started with content in Hindi, intends to get into four languages. In the next six months, it claims it will have more than 100 originals. Each title will have 50 to 60 episodes, each episode about two to two-and-a-half minutes long. Singhal says: “An entire title is equivalent to a movie—about two to two-and-a-half hours.” 

In contrast to a movie, though, micro drama is far quicker to make and costs much less. “It is less than 5 percent of the cost of a video OTT series. It takes 28 to 30 days to produce a title end-to-end,” points out Singhal. At Balaji Telefilms, Burman says they are trying to ensure that an episode is shot in a day or two. It takes two to three days on average.

Chandra of Chai Shots explains that the budgets are lower because the frame is tighter for mobile phone consumption—it is a vertical screen without much space. “Making micro dramas is like having a wedding with 50 people, while the IMAX mode is organising it with a thousand guests. Forget the dinner, the decoration will cost 20 times more,” he says. “Micro dramas are more economical and give a chance to a lot of talent to get groomed.”

These are early days, and each player is figuring out its revenue model, depending on consumer response. Kutingg, for instance, is clear that someone watching content on the platform need not have a subscription for AltBalaji. “Our financial models are independent,” says Burman. “Kutingg follows a microfinance-based model, where you have a wallet with coins to start watching the content. The minimum recharge value is ₹10 (10 coins) and the maximum is  ₹299 (unlimited coins for a month).”

Burman says Kutingg has seen 20,000 wallet recharges in the last two months, and that 20 to 30 percent of those who have consumed Kutingg content ended up taking AltBalaji subscription. “We are also introducing ads soon. We will give consumers the option of watching them to earn more coins,” he says, adding that the highest consumption on the platform has come from the 18-to-30 age group, especially from Tier II and III towns. “We are a Hindi-speaking app, and the most traction is from Hindi-speaking markets such as Uttar Pradesh and Bihar, apart from metros like Mumbai and Delhi.”

Flick TV has a micro-payments (pay per show) and subscription model. It plans to start a quarterly or monthly subscription plan and is awaiting feedback from users before finalising the pricing. 

Chai Shots is contemplating a couple of options—a fixed monthly subscription and payment per show or micro-payments. “With micro-payments, you immediately know the response. Maybe it will be an either-or. By the time you come to the subscription model, you need to have a big bank of shows,” Chandra tells Forbes India. What he is most excited about though is the prospect of involving brands. “Brand-integrated content is something we are exploring. Micro dramas are a great space for brands,” he adds.

Tech & AI Play

Both Flick TV and Chai Shots plan to use the money raised from VCs for creating quality and diverse content. More importantly, the focus is on developing the tech and infrastructure besides going big on marketing and expansion. Artificial intelligence (AI), especially, will play a big role and that is something about which VCs and startups are enthusiastic.

“Historically, content production has been an expensive process. AI holds the great promise to reduce the cost by one-fifth to one-tenth,” says Jain of Stellaris Venture Partners. Genres like fantasy, sci-fi, mythology and horror become expensive propositions because of their expansive sets and technology. “AI is amenable to these genres. As AI models become robust, I think the AI catalogue will keep increasing.” 

Chandra says because the content is on an app, VCs see micro dramas as a tech business and are joining the bandwagon. “But it is as much a content play as a tech play,” he argues.

Agarwal of Info Edge Ventures challenges the notion that the VCs are here only because of the tech angle. “It is a mix. It always starts with the consumer. Consumer needs are changing. So, one has to assess and back a team that can use AI and has the content chops to deliver it,” she emphasises.

Balaji Telefilms has set up its in-house AI team. It also made Kaal Nagri, its first fully AI-made drama that streamed in June.

Zee Entertainment acquired a stake in content startup Bullet in June to start a micro drama app that will be integrated into the Zee5 platform. “The compelling value proposition of Bullet stems from its deep focus on creator-led content, gamified experiences, AI-powered personalisation and content pricing, thereby revolutionising how Indian short-form stories are created, discovered and monetised,” a Zee Entertainment spokesperson says over email.

Survival Of the Fittest

Apart from Zee, Amazon MX Player has launched Fatafat, a micro drama platform. “We are tapping into a format that is designed for today’s time-starved, mobile-first audience,” says Amogh Dusad, director and head (content), Amazon MX Player. “We see it as a significant opportunity to lead meaningful innovation in entertainment consumption.”

Burman of Balaji Telefilms likens the rush into micro drama to what happened with OTTs a decade ago. He says the sector’s biggest challenge is that one needs to give content regularly to consumers. “And you need unlimited funds to churn out that content. Only the big platforms will be able to do that,” he says, adding that the plan is to eventually move Kutingg out of AltBalaji and have it as an independent app.

Flick TV’s Singhal says the entry of multiple players augurs well for the industry as the ecosystem will build up. He, however, is not sure if all players will end up being successful. “Over the long term, only three or four players will have a majority share of the market. A long tail of 10 players will take the remaining,” he says.

Chandra of Chai Shots predicts that there will be at least 50 players in the micro dramas space by the end of the year and jokes that he keeps adding to the names that have entered the ring on a board in his office. He believes a lot of non-content people are getting into the space and are seeing it purely as a tech business. “The winner will be the one who will be able to produce great content and launch one or two shows every month that are extraordinary. If 10 platforms are able to consistently drop one or two shows a month, people will subscribe to all of them,” he says.

The competition is certain to intensify, says Jain of Stellar Venture Partners, but adds that there will be consolidation and a few players will emerge as winners. “This is a micro drama OTT space, so we don’t think it will be a winner-take-all as it happens with OTTs,” he says. 

Singhal reveals that Flick TV is incubating production houses on the ground, addressing challenges such as locations, and has started the model in Noida. “Our job is to create the next Yash Raj Films or Balaji in this space,” he asserts.

Echoing his views, Chandra, as an insider, can sense that this is the start of something big. “We are not realising it. I think we are ahead of the curve. We are talking about the future… It is like AI. It is a nice confluence of content and consumer technology. There is no doubt about the format.”