If you’re the kind of person who can’t sit through a full episode of a Netflix show anymore, don’t worry. You’re not alone. The rest of India seems to be feeling the same, and the internet has found a cure.
It’s called the micro drama.
Tiny, turbo-charged episodes. Vertical format. Wild, unapologetic plotlines. One twist every minute, sometimes two. It’s as if your daily soap opera had a caffeine overdose and decided to live inside your phone.
What began as an experiment with Chinese apps has evolved into a full-blown phenomenon. And now, India, with its unrelenting love for drama and its billion mobile phones, is poised to turn this format into its next significant artistic export.
The Drama Is Distilled
Let’s clarify what we’re talking about.
A micro drama is not a reel. It’s not a TikTok. It’s not your cousin lip-syncing to a Shah Rukh Khan dialogue. It’s a scripted show, complete with characters, plot arcs, and emotional stakes, just compressed into bite-sized episodes of 60 to 90 seconds each. One full story usually spans 40 to 50 episodes, making the entire experience shorter than a feature film but infinitely more bingeable.
It’s storytelling built for the short attention span, and it doesn’t waste time on slow burns. You get the cheating husband, the fake wedding, the long-lost heir, all before you’ve finished your chai.
And it’s addictive. Brutally so.
China Cracked The Code
According to the China Netcasting Services Association, the country’s micro-drama industry generated more revenue than its entire box office. Over 50 billion yuan, or about $6.9 billion, as per CNBC, all from stories designed to be watched vertically, on the go, in a queue or under your blanket at 2AM.
Apps like DramaBox and ReelShort experienced a surge in popularity. DramaBox’s app revenue jumped from $8 million in 2023 to $217 million in 2024. Apps across the genre showed triple-digit growth in Asia, and even started catching on in the U.S. and Brazil, according to Deadline.
It was only a matter of time before India joined the effort.
No Country Does Drama Like We Do
We already had Kyunki Saas Bhi Kabhi Bahu Thi, Kasautii Zindagii Kay, Koffee with Karan, and every second Bollywood movie. Our storytelling DNA is made up of heartbreak, betrayal, mother-in-law conspiracies, lost property documents, and evil twins.
What we needed was a format that kept up with how we live now, on the move, on our phones, with a dozen tabs open and two missed calls.
That’s exactly what micro dramas offer. And Indian platforms aren’t wasting time.
Kuku TV, launched by audio platform Kuku FM, is one of the early movers. Its catalogue already includes original Hindi titles like Rented Husband, Revenge of My Fake Boyfriend, and Gumshuda Waris, all shot in vertical format, all dripping with drama. It’s absurd. It’s shameless. It’s everything our inner soap-lover wants, minus the guilt.
And it’s not alone. Story TV, Pocket TV, Flick TV, Eloelo — everyone’s racing to build India’s first micro drama empire.
Which also includes big OTT giants in the front row. JioHotstar, as per sources is on the edge to push their own, we already have been fed with Sparks, that prompts a range of content from popular creators all across the country. Amazon MX Player has introduced MX Fatafat—bite-sized web series designed for the fast-paced viewer, with each episode lasting just two minutes. We are told SonyLIV, ZEE5, OTTPlay are also contemplating introducing micro drama formats soon. The trend already has takers and consumers on Insta Reels and Youtube Shorts.
Where The Real Audience Is
Here’s what’s fascinating: the big growth isn’t coming from Mumbai or Delhi. It’s coming from Patna, Kanpur, Jaipur, Kota, and Lucknow. These are cities where theatres aren’t always nearby, and OTT subscriptions are still a luxury. For many users, the smartphone isn’t just their main screen — it’s their only screen.
A recent Financial Express report estimates the Indian micro drama market to reach $5 billion by 2030. And 68% of users on short video platforms are from smaller towns, not the metros.
More surprisingly? Nearly 40% of Story TV’s audience is made up of women between 18 and 35, according to CEO Saurabh Pandey, speaking to India Today. This is significant because short-form content in India has traditionally been skewed towards males. Something about these dramatic, emotionally charged, low-commitment episodes seems to be drawing in a broader and more loyal audience.
As Pandey puts it, India does not have cinema or TV penetration in every household, so entertainment is not mobile-first; it is mobile-only. So we expect a much larger base from the 500 million middle-class Indian users to gradually adapt to micro-dramas,” as India Today quotes. And that audience, finally, is getting stories that feel made for them.
Cheap to Make. Fast to Watch. Easy to Love.
From a business perspective, micro dramas are a dream.
They’re cheap to produce. Some are even created using AI tools to write, dub, and edit more efficiently. They take days or weeks, not months, to go from script to screen. And their shelf life? Practically infinite, as long as people are scrolling.
For creators, it’s a low-risk playground. For platforms, it’s an engagement machine. For viewers, it’s an emotional payoff on demand. Everyone wins.
And while the stories may seem light, the implications are not. This is a new way of telling stories, and it’s rewriting the rules of what counts as entertainment.
Our K-Drama Moment?
It’s tempting to compare this wave to the K-drama craze, the way Korean storytelling took the world by storm. But micro dramas aren’t trying to be polished or prestige-driven. They’re proudly pulp. They know they’re over-the-top. That’s their magic.
But like K-dramas, they carry a hierarchy DNA. The overprotective father, the scheming in-laws, the stolen inheritance, they’re rooted in our collective emotional vocabulary. With the correct distribution, the correct language adaptations, and the right push, these small stories could have big global legs.
Who says India can’t export high-drama storytelling that fits in your palm?
One Episode At A Time
In the end, it’s simple.
People are tired. They don’t always have 60 minutes for prestige TV. But they do have two minutes while waiting for a cab, standing in line, or pretending to be productive.
Micro dramas are not a replacement for great cinema or deep narrative arcs. But they don’t need to be. They’re something else entirely: a mirror to how we feel, scroll, consume, and cope, one mini cliffhanger at a time.
And if India plays it well, the next big global storytelling wave might not come from a film festival in Europe or a red carpet in LA. It might come from a sleepy town in India, filmed on a phone, and watched by millions, two minutes at a time.
So will the trend last? In India, business realities have always been tough and like short form content, which went from being a rage to a plague till hitting the final pause, micro dramas too will have to define the contours of engagement with definitive purpose to emerge as a genre to reckon with.
Only time will tell if micro indeed is David in this Goliath battle.
Keep reading IWMBuzz.com.
