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Do You Watch Micro-dramas?
Kudrat Wadhwa
November 01, 2025 • Estimated Reading Time: 6 minutes
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Dear Reader,
A secret billionaire, a furious ex, and one-minute cliffhangers. That’s Gold Digger Kahin Ki, one of the many micro-dramas India can’t stop watching.
Micro-dramas are ultra-short, scripted video stories, usually 30 seconds to five minutes long. And, right now, they are exploding in India. Analysts estimate the space could reach $5 billion by 2030. In just the first half of 2025, venture capitalists invested $44 million in Indian micro-drama startups. Leading platforms include Flick TV, ReelSaga, Chai Bisket, and Bullet, which recently partnered with ZEE5.
“You save time watching them, but they still hit deep emotionally,” said Tamanna Luna, an 18-year-old college student from Mumbai who watches micro-dramas almost daily. She admitted that these shows are both feeding and worsening everyone’s shrinking attention spans.
But Tamanna is not the typical viewer. According to Sambbhav Khetarpal, head of Sooper, the Hindi arm of Hoichoi, the main audience for micro-dramas are Hindi-speaking men aged 18 to 30 who earn between Rs 15,000 and Rs 20,000 a month.
“These stories tap into that demographic’s fantasies,” Sambbhav said. “They mix rags-to-riches plots with hidden-identity twists, like a delivery boy who is secretly a billionaire.”
Sambbhav said that these shows work because they let viewers escape for a moment. It’s a world totally different from their own; in it, the underdog always wins, the rich get humbled, and everyone gets their happy ending.
Hear more from Tamanna, Sambbhav, and other viewers in the latest episode of The Signal Brief. You can find us on Youtube, Spotify and Apple Podcasts.
I’d love to hear what you thought! Write to us at [email protected], or reach me directly on Instagram or Twitter at @thesignaldotco, or via email at [email protected].
Thanks for listening, and have a rejuvenating weekend.
Best,
Kudrat
on behalf of The Core
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