How Microdramas Became India's Newest Entertainment Phenomenon

Between January and July 2025, microdramas were tipped to become India’s next big entertainment phenomenon. By August, they already are.

This snackable, vertically produced short-form format — often described as ‘content’ rather than storytelling — has witnessed explosive growth in India’s digital ecosystem. According to Exchange4Media, an online platform reporting trends in media and entertainment, while the global microdrama market is expected to surpass $10 billion by 2030, India alone is projected to account for $5 billion within the next five years, driven by a surge in demand for hyper-serialised daily entertainment.

Kuku TV, which launched in October last year, is widely credited with pioneering the format in India. Within a year, the app has surpassed 50 million downloads across Google Play Store and the App Store. Its library includes over 10,000 hours of ‘sticky’ content — a term that has become shorthand for anything engineered to keep audiences scrolling. Among its most-watched titles, each clocking upwards of 50 million views, are Rented Husband, Waiting for Love, Ek Anjani Shaadi, The Final Boss, Revenge of My Fake Boyfriend, and Happily Never After.

If the aforementioned names leave room for ambiguity, the content does not. In Revenge of My Fake Boyfriend, by the 56-second mark, the lead male character says: “Hum log itna sex karenge ki tumhe kapde pehenne ka mauka tak nahi milega” (“We’ll have so much sex, you won’t even get the chance to put your clothes back on”). Ten seconds later, a glass of water is flung at his face by the female lead. He retaliates by threatening to “strip” her family of its reputation. It’s clear that provocation is the point.

“Eighty per cent of our users are from Tier 1 and Tier 2 cities. Kuku TV has been the most downloaded app in India for about two months now, according to the Google Play Store,” says Kunj Sanghvi, Vice President of Content at Kuku TV.

According to Exchange4Media, India’s OTT market stood at ₹37,940 crore in 2024–25. While longform prestige dramas and feature films continue to draw headlines, microdrama platforms like Moj, ShareChat, and Kuku TV are steadily chipping away at their market share by reportedly clocking over 120-million-episode views daily.

The appeal is simple: these dramas don’t have time to meander. Each episode, which is typically under two minutes, is designed to seize attention immediately, often with a dramatic confrontation, emotional reveal, or a high-stakes cliffhanger. Romance and revenge are currently the genre front-runners.

“I’d call them reels on steroids,” says Anuj Gosalia, founder and CEO of Terribly Tiny Tales, which recently entered the space with a robust slate of microdrama commissions. “They’re basically 60-to-120-second episodes spanning anywhere between 45 and 100 episodes. Every single episode has a hook, a resolution, and a cliffhanger built tightly into it. It takes what makes a reel go viral and what makes fiction work, weaponising it into a format that can keep you glued to your phone for hours.”

Gosalia adds, “They’re predominantly plot-centric. The humiliation-redemption arc is huge. It speaks to you at a primal level. That’s why some people call it TV minus-minus.” That primal pull is no accident, it’s designed. “It’s a heavily engineered format and that’s why it works. In a way, it’s tinkering with your brain,” he says.

A writer who has been working on microdramas for the past six months, speaking on condition of anonymity, breaks it down further. “The only conversation we’re having in the writers’ room is: what happens at which second? At 50–55 seconds, inject a potential sex scene or a slap — that’s the hook. At 1 minute 25 seconds, open a door but don’t let them see inside — that’s [creating] suspense. That’s how mechanically we’re writing these shows. No one even cares what happens in the broader story.”

The difference, they note, is not just in structure but in privacy. “We used to use ‘sticky’ for TV writing too. But TV plays in the living room. This plays in your hand. On your private screen, we allow ourselves to be — not perverted — but devolved versions of ourselves. There’s no need to perform, to pretend we’re high-brow. What caters to these versions of us? Soft porn caters to all demographics.”

Writer-director-producer Aatish Kapadia, known for cult Indian comedies like Khichdi and Sarabhai vs Sarabhai, agrees. “It’s vicarious viewing. It’s private. You want the viewer to pay for the next episode, so your cliffhanger almost always goes back to: will they kiss, will they have sex?”

But Sanghvi pushes back. “As far as soft porn is concerned, I think it’s a very limited way of looking at it. Yes, there are massy themes, but Kuku TV has over six or seven shows with more than 50 million views each, and not even one has any element of soft porn. If anything, you can accuse us of selling the billionaire dream, but not sex.”

There’s also a perceived double standard in how certain content is categorised. “When female characters dress a certain way on our platform, it’s soft porn. But when a Yash Raj Films production does it, it’s just an item song,” points out Sanghvi. “It’s about who’s doing it. When a big star is scantily clad, it’s glamour. When it’s a struggling actor, it’s provocation. But the themes we explore are aspiration, societal validation, revenge, redemption — no different from the ones that power mainstream drama.”

With quick turnarounds and low production costs, the return on investment is attractive and is drawing everyone in. “You’ll see a new platform mushrooming in this space every day,” says Kapadia. “Typically, we go from idea to release in about 30 days,” says Vijay Subramaniam, founder and Group CEO at Collective Artists Network. “A compact format, a lean team, and an agile production model help us respond to trends and cultural moments quickly, while also planning longer arcs.” But Kapadia warns that with scale comes templatisation. “Most people don’t even understand that form and content are two different things. Right now, everyone is chasing the same content bucket. That’s why it’s all starting to look the same. Everything is voyeuristic, formulaic.”

Yet, Kapadia remains hopeful. “There’s scope to expand, subvert, experiment. In the micro format, we’re already making warm, funny, family stories, even slow burns. You snack on them like a packet of Gems. It’s silly to think this explosive new form can only serve lechers,” he adds, laughing.

“We’re in July now. By June 2026, microdramas will be an epidemic,” Kapadia predicts.

Gosalia offers a more tempered take. “Just like on YouTube or Instagram, you’ll get plenty of cringe. But every now and then, someone will break through with brilliance. That’s what we’re hoping to do. We want people to look at a microdrama and say, ‘We didn’t think this format could do that.’ And now, it can.”

The Anatomy of a Microdrama Episode

Built for Addiction

Microdramas follow a tightly engineered structure designed to maximise viewer retention and virality:

• 0–10 seconds: Establish characters and conflict immediately.

• 50–55 seconds: Introduce a hook. Typically, a slap, a sexual reference, or a dramatic confrontation.

• 1:25–1:30: Build suspense — opening a door without revealing what’s behind it.

• Final seconds: End on a cliffhanger designed to compel the viewer to click “next.”

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