Google & YouTube eye the growing $260 mn Indian micro-drama pie

A new bite-sized content format has taken the Indian Media & Entertainment (M&E) industry by storm: micro-drama. These short, serialised stories are rapidly evolving from a niche trend to a major force, becoming the go-to entertainment for consumers during the "valuable in-between moments" of their day.

Speaking on behalf of Alphabet Inc.'s Google and YouTube, Manish Dhamankar, head of industry - media & entertainment at Google India, confirms the seismic shift. 

He notes that the category has seen a "big transformation" this year, adding, "We've seen more than 250 million downloads in this category this year alone, and in November, five out of the top 10 free entertainment apps, as per Sensor Tower, were Indian microdrama apps."

The consumer appetite is clear, with cumulative downloads for these apps seeing a 16X growth compared to the previous year, validating a consumer willingness to pay for subscriptions comparable to the wider OTT landscape (Source: Data.ai).

The demand for speed and volume

Micro-dramas' success stems from their brevity, convenience, and availability of content. A Google x Qualtrix Survey (2025) found that 69% of respondents watch micro-dramas in the evening to relax, 55% during work/school breaks, and 51% during commutes.

For Indian audiences, the key to platform selection is overwhelmingly content, with 67% prioritising a large volume of drama series, followed by strong original content (56%) and genre diversity (55%).

This demand places significant pressure on platforms to produce vast amounts of high-quality content quickly.

While engaging episodes with cliffhanger endings have been the addictive glue holding the micro-drama audiences together, repetitive content in the same genres has also led to content fatigue in the audience, as per the latest Redseer Strategy Consultants' report. 

As Dhamankar observes, "The primary motivation for users to consume this content was a steady stream of original, good-quality and genre-diverse content. This also puts the onus on these platforms to be able to turn out very high-quality and high-volume content at a very high speed."

Moreover, the audience is open to content from different languages. 68% of surveyed audiences are watching content in more languages than before (Source: Google x Kantar Shopper Pulse 2024), and 64% accept micro-dramas produced in other languages with voice-over and subtitles in their first language (Source: Google x Qualtrix 2025 Survey).

Google AI: 'turbocharging' the content engine

Google’s suite of artificial intelligence tools aims to become central to solving the production challenge to meet high demand, offering end-to-end creative support across the full content lifecycle. 

Dhamankar says, "Our entire suite of Google AI products is turbocharging the entire life cycle of microdrama creation right from the ideation and scripting stage to the post-production."

The specific AI tools being leveraged include:

• Gemini models: Dhamankar says, "Our Gemini models are used by content producers for research and ideation and scripting as well."
• Imagen & Nano Banana: "When it comes to image generation, our Nano Banana and Imagen models are used for creating storyboards or character arcs or even marketing assets," he states.
• Veo 3: A video generation model used for high-quality video generation, as well as advanced post-production capabilities and editing content.
• Chirp: "And finally, our model called Chirp is used for realistic natural audio generation, which is used for dubbing in several Indian languages and also generating audio for AI-generated videos," says Dhamankar.

Collectively, these tools deliver high cost and time efficiencies, claims Google. Industry data from EY suggests adoption of AI can increase revenues by 10% and reduce costs by 15% for M&E companies in India, with 56% of Indian M&E companies surveyed reporting AI has been instrumental in reducing costs.

AI case study: Zee5’s trailer production

According to Dhamankar, Zee5 successfully used Google’s ViGenAir (video production AI) solution, achieving a 95% reduction in editing costs and cutting the trailer production time from a 16-hour manual process to under one hour. This efficiency allowed the company to triple the volume of campaign videos while ensuring the AI-generated creatives performed on par with manually cut videos.

Dhamankar highlights this success: "Zee5 used our Google AI-powered tool called ViGenAir. They were able to use our Google AI-powered solution to cut down the time for creating multiple assets by more than 95% and turn out 3x more creatives in the same amount of resourcing." 

On concerns that AI might lead to templated content, Dhamankar offers a self-correcting perspective.

"This is just a tool in the hands of the humans who are going to be running the show. I think this is a self-correcting mechanism wherein good-quality content will stick anywhere and grow. Content that is repetitive and fails to engage users will automatically get phased out."

Where does YouTube come in?

The second challenge facing the micro-drama industry is discoverability in an increasingly fragmented streaming landscape, says Dhamankar. The average streamer in India accesses 6.5 OTT platforms, severely fragmenting the streaming landscape (Source: Google x Kantar Shopper Pulse 2024).

This scenario extends to micro-dramas, with 63% of viewers using two to three apps and 17% using more than five apps (Source: Google x Qualtrix Survey 2025).

YouTube aims to emerge as the solution, serving as one of the top five sources of content discovery for OTT platforms (Source: Kantar). Its reach of 650 million users on Shorts and 75 million on CTV makes it the "natural starting point for the content journey," as Dhamankar puts it.

The multi-format approach of the platform also fuels deeper discovery, with an Ipsos study in India showing 69% of all surveyed respondents aged 18 to 44 agree that they use short-form video apps to discover things that they then watch longer versions of.

Ad and acquisition case studies

Quick TV (micro-drama OTT): According to Google, the platform used AI-powered app download campaigns to maximise conversions for its new micro-drama launch. Dhamankar notes, "The micro-drama platform Quick TV used our AI-powered app install campaigns wherein they were able to double the number of downloads and also increase their number of in-app trials 1.5 times using our ad products." Platforms can even use episodes of their content as ad units.

SonyLIV: By adopting a multi-format strategy across Shorts and CTV via video view campaigns, SonyLIV achieved a “200% increase in conversion rates and a 10% reduction in effective CPA” compared to single-format campaigns.

On the future of the micro-drama revenue model, Dhamankar predicts a hybrid approach.

 "There will be a hybrid monetisation model that will evolve over a period of time. So it will be subscription-based, ad-based, and pay-per-view-based, so there will be multiple business models and monetisation models which will co-exist."

With strong user demand for high-volume, diverse, and multilingual content, and AI lowering the barrier to entry for creators, Dhamankar is confident about the format's future.

"The early indications that we've seen this year suggest that there is a very strong demand, and not just from the users, but even from platforms that are building in this space and VCs who are investing in this space. So we believe that there is significant growth to be achieved in this space next year going forward."