More than 118 million people in India watch microdramas every month, a fact that will surprise anyone who assumed the country had better things to do than binge vertical soap operas. EloElo's Story TV, one of the top apps in the format with over 33 million active users according to analysts, has now raised $80 million in Series C funding from Hornbill Capital and NBCUniversal. The round brings EloElo's total fundraising to $130 million and values the company at $500 million - proving once again that serialized content is a global gold rush, with Hollywood celebrities like Issa Rae, James Franco, and Kim Kardashian investing in and starring in the format.
With India's internet population north of a billion and an appetite for entertainment that borders on insatiable, analysts expect the microdrama industry to cross $3 - $4 billion in annual revenue by 2030. Last year, dedicated apps like Story TV, Kuku TV, and Quick TV were among the top downloaded video streaming apps in the country. Founded in 2020 by former Flipkart exec Saurabh Pandey, Story TV has a catalog of over 5,000 titles in six languages. Pandey told TechCrunch that because of the snackable format, users log 95 minutes on the app on average through multiple sessions a day - because nothing says 'quality screen time' like a dozen fragmented sessions of melodrama.
"I fundamentally believe that the next billion users will probably not grow up on a diet of watching television; they will grow up on a diet of watching content on their phones, right?" Pandey said. "And this content has to be, and this entertainment, designed very differently. It's not going to be appointment viewing. It's going to be within certain slots throughout the day. And a lot of this was earlier solved for short clips, but serialized storytelling was never solved." He acknowledged there will still be a place for big-screen viewing with family or friends, but the majority of entertainment consumption would happen through mobile - a safe bet given that most people now treat their phones as a third limb.
All microdrama platforms compete against free content on YouTube, Instagram, and TikTok, where creators post for nothing. Pandey thinks producing quality content will entice users to choose StoryTV over those free alternatives, pointing to partnerships like the one with Indian TV production company Balaji Telefilms. The company offers monthly, quarterly, and yearly subscriptions to unlock content, plus some ad-supported free content - which, according to reports, might not be as lucrative as subscriptions. Monetization in India remains a challenge: users stick around for free content but few convert to paid. A Redseer report indicates more than 40 million people have paid for microdrama at least once, but only 15 - 17 million pay monthly. A separate Ormax Media survey suggested 72% of people have never paid while consuming microdrama - because who pays for anything when free is an option?
To keep up supply, platforms are turning to AI. Some, like Google-backed Kuku, want to improve workflows and create more content; others, like Dashverse's Shortfree, want to use video AI models to create serialized clips. StoryTV falls into the first camp with its Dolphin AI platform - started as an internal tool to improve video creation, now planned for wider availability. It can act as an editor with templates and an array of models to create images, audio, and video, per its website. EloElo's vision is to have people use this tool for marketing campaigns and ads as well. Notably, while Indian platforms like Pocket and Kuku have built AI tools and given them to creators - likely accelerating their content pipeline - at InVideo there hasn't been a scaled effort to provide a good alternative to CapCut or Instagram Edits for creators from India.
Pandey believes human involvement is still paramount to producing good stories, and AI tools are creative directors for steering. "My belief in involving AI is that AI is a really fast race car where AI is the engine, but you need an extremely capable Formula One driver to be on the steering wheel. That, for me, is the creative director or the showrunner. AI is supposed to work with them, augmenting their skill set. AI can help write stories, but so far the best stories I have loved have all had a very high human x AI element to it," he said.
Besides microdrama, EloElo also has a vertical video learning app, Master - competing with Seekho and Kuku's Guru - and an AI companion app, Voxy AI. The company says it has more than 40 million monthly users across its apps, though it didn't bifurcate by app; the majority belong to Story TV. EloElo currently has 240 employees and wants to hire to expand its AI and machine learning research team. It's also deploying a good chunk of capital to produce more original titles. MIT Investment Co., along with existing investors like Play Ventures, Kalaari Capital, Waterbridge Ventures, and Griffin Gaming Partners, invested in the round. Because if there's one thing the world needs, it's more vertical dramas about betrayal and revenge - delivered in 95-minute daily doses.