Inside India’s Soft Porn Streaming Industry: What Happens After the Government Ban?

“Industry mein sirf do cheezein bikti hai — gold ya bold,” writer-director Rafat Abbas Ali tells The Hollywood Reporter India. (“Only two things sell in the industry — gold or bold.”) ‘Gold’ refers to “premium” stories streaming on platforms like Netflix and Amazon Prime Video, while ‘bold’ are the erotic shows on apps like Ullu and ALTBalaji (ALTT).

A craftsman of the latter, Ali also goes by Raifee — “Hollywood jaisa naam lagta hai,” a Hollywood-like name, he laughs. He has directed over 55 shows for both Ullu and ALTT, a prolific filmography that includes names like Rangeen Kahaniyan (2025), Namkeen Kisse (2024), Mithai Wali (2025), Devrani, Jethani Aur Voh (2023), and Love Guru (2022), an architect of desires for the Hindi heartland man.

Then suddenly, in July this year, when the Ministry of Information and Broadcasting (MIB) banned 25 OTT platforms and their related mobile apps, including Ullu, ALTT, Hulchul, and Desiflix, this world that was his solid ground for years was yanked out from under his feet. “Actors have been calling me, worried about work. It is not like they cannot do ‘gold’-type stories, but once you have done ‘bold’ stories, it becomes difficult,” he notes.

The rationale given for this ban was the “obscene content” on these platforms that engaged in “indecent representation of women.” Just two months earlier, in May, House Arrest, a captivity-based reality show hosted by actor Ajaz Khan on Ullu, came under fire when a clip from the show went viral — of Khan asking a female contestant about sex positions, and later asking two other contestants to enact these positions. Another challenge on this show was for the women to take off their undergarments from under their clothes, on camera. After MIB’s intervention, Ullu took down the show.

The Economics of Titillation

Ullu was launched in 2018 by Vibhu Agarwal, who pivoted from the steel industry into storytelling. “There was a gap in the market. People consume erotic content, but there was nothing to watch,” Nivedita Basu, the ex-Vice President of Ullu tells THR India.

Ullu registered over 11 crore downloads as of 2025, with over five crore active users. It had a low-cost subscription model, ranging from ₹90 for 10 days to ₹792 for a year. “With a clean audience, you do not know — but with erotic content there is always an audience,” Basu notes.

Ullu was also quick to shoot and put out their shows, releasing roughly four a month. It would take two months to make a show — from ideation to edit. Raifee is proud of his track record — shooting six episodes in two days. A show’s budget would be roughly between ₹15 lakhs-₹20 lakhs. Given the ready-made, eager audience, and the cheap production, profitability was inevitable.

In 2024, tech journalist Sowmya Gupta wrote in an article for online business and strategic news portal The Core, “Ullu seems to be the only profitable streaming company in the country.” During FY 2023-24, the app made nearly ₹93 crore, with a net profit of over ₹15 crore. Vibhu Agarwal even filed papers for an initial public offering (IPO) on small and medium enterprises (SME) exchanges, tentatively raising ₹115 crore. This ban has caulked those plans.

Alongside Ullu, Agarwal also launched Atrangi TV, a family friendly, free-to-air channel, and Hari Om App, focused on devotional content. Ullu itself has branched out, with Ullu Music for audio entertainment, and Ullu 99, an e-commerce venture that sells men’s innerwear, gamchas, and handkerchiefs.

Even the actresses who worked on these shows came to be known as the “Ullu App Girls”, their faces and bodies plastered over ads for gaming and betting — both with a disproportionate male user base. Raifee says, “Yeh male audience hai, ladke ki koi value nahi hoti hai show mein (This is a male audience; there is no value for having men on the show).” Actresses like Bharti Jha, called the “expression queen” and Priyanka Chaurasia have made their careers on and through such apps. There is a heaving afterlife to the platform. “Like Xerox was for photocopying, Ullu became the definition of a certain kind of content,” Basu says.

In a country where porn consumption is rapid and free, what could a subscription-based soft-porn platform offer?

“The idea was to titillate the audience, with thumbnails and posters, to get them excited. Porn can only be exciting to a level. But there is no story. When there is a story, it is always engaging. Ullu managed to capture that,” Basu tells THR India.

One of the primary learnings over the years was that their target audience preferred rural stories. None of this urban Fifty Shades of Grey worked; it alienated them. Also, counter-intuitively, perhaps, what worked in these shows is not the sex itself, but the scenes of titillation around the sex.

“If you have a 100-minute series, 20 to 25 minutes overall would be the erotic parts. It can’t be forced. If you edit out the erotic part, it could be a clean 80 minutes,” Basu says. Raifee, too, keeps this in mind while shooting, “Sex pasand nahin hain. People skip it, or forward. For six to seven minutes of titillation, there might be one minute of sex. Start se sexual position tak, uss par focus karte hai log (From the beginning to the sex position, that is what people focus on).”

The Rules of Engagement

Since it was a soft porn platform, there were hard boundaries to adhere to — “We will never do a ‘full monty’,” Basu notes. “Private parts touch hi nahin hone dete hai,” Raifee clarifies his set etiquettes, where actors are always wearing innerwear and the touching of “private parts” is taboo. The soundtrack of Raja Babu is usually played on set while shooting sex scenes, to keep the atmosphere light. Raifee begins shooting only after the actress says she is comfortable and makes sure the male actors do strictly what he instructs them to. He insists that what he was after was not “vulgar” erotic content.

Raifee focuses, instead, on “beauty shots”— slow motion, the lead up to sex, “TRP”— shots of the cleavage, and “humping jumping”— footage of the woman riding the man. Having shot over 1,000 sex scenes, he keeps experimenting with sex positions — “Koi bhi position hai, saari try ki hai, kuch nahi chhoda (We’ve tried every position possible)” — and finds ways of making sure the actress can shoot in a bra and panty, giving the illusion of nudity, “Object saamne rakhte hai taaki utna dikhe. Camera angle lagna chahiye jaise nude hai (We keep an object in the foreground so that much is not seen. The camera angle makes it look like she is nude).”

These platforms straddle a world between what is respectable storytelling and otherwise — while also trying to give erotic stories a veneer of respectability, by further creating a distinction between ‘vulgar’ and ‘non-vulgar’ ones. It is a tightrope act, one that gets harder as the goalposts of storytelling, and the moral police keep shifting. What is clear is that a robust demand exists as the government has sharply shut its supply. The million dollar, or rather, the ₹93-crore question is what shape this demand will now take.

To read more exclusive stories from The Hollywood Reporter India's September 2025 print issue, pick up a copy of the magazine from your nearest book store or newspaper stand.

To buy the digital issue of the magazine, please click here.