A cheesy love triangle, overly-dramatic dialogues, a mind-bogglingly unreal yet addictive storyline, jealousy, betrayal, revenge, lots and lots of werewolves, and more—all packed into bite-sized episodes spanning less than three minutes. Enter the world of ultra-short drama-streaming platforms that are increasingly gaining steam in India—a market where 86% of Internet users, which equals a whopping 707 million people, enjoy over-the-top (OTT) audio and video services, according to a recent report by the Internet and Mobile Association of India (IAMAI) and consulting firm Kantar.
The premise of such dramas is gripping, and so is the format—TikTok-style vertically-shot ultra-short videos that you scroll to watch the next episode.
ReelShort is one such streaming service that is increasingly grabbing eyeballs in India, a major consumer of both Instagram Reels and YouTube Shorts. In January itself, the app was downloaded 4 million times and generated a revenue of $3 million worldwide, according to market research company Sensor Tower.
While the United States is the biggest market for this China-backed app, India is the second-biggest, according to the data aggregation firm Similarweb.
Staggeringly, the app, which is little-known amid the likes of Netflix, Amazon Prime Video, Disney+ Hotstar, et al, is among the highest-grossing entertainment apps in the country. As per Sensor Tower’s latest figures, the app stood fourth among the top-grossing entertainment apps in India—well above Netflix, which ranked fifth. On Google Play Store, the app stood third. Interestingly, the app that stood second was DramaBox, another ultra-short drama streaming platform.
Since its global launch in August 2022, ReelShort made $22 million in revenue, Joey Jia, the chief executive of Crazy Maple Studio, which owns the app, told The Wall Street Journal.
The format is unique and so is the way of the revenue model. Unlike the traditional OTT platforms for which one needs to buy a subscription in order to start watching the content, one can start the ReelShort dramas for free. However, after a while, one has to pay, or view an ad, to watch the next episodes—a perfect recipe as the storylines develop fast and episodes end on a cliffhanger, making users loosen their purse strings.
While the revenue model is unique, the cost of making a series is as low as $300,000 or less, according to The New York Times. Compare this with Netflix. According to Forbes, just an episode of The Crown Season 5 cost a whopping $14.4 million.
However, unlike Netflix and other such platforms, ReelShort isn’t an app for someone who has a few hours in hand. Rather, it’s something that one would watch when short on time and on the go.
Not only ReelShort and DramaBox but a number of other ultra-short drama streaming platforms have launched in India, such as ShortTV and FlexTV.
Notably, traditional OTT platforms, too, have tried their hands at the short video format. Netflix’s Fast Laughs, which the platform started testing in India last year, is a case in point. These are TikTok-like videos of clips from Netflix shows. A query to the company, however, didn’t elicit any response.
Amazon’s miniTV has a host of short films, spanning around 10 to 15 minutes. Similarly, Disney+ Hotstar, too, has a slew of short films with lengths of less than an hour. The same is the case with Zee5.
While entertainment platforms are increasingly catering to the reduced attention span and the popularity of the short-video platform, with vertically-shot scrollable videos that hardly span three minutes, the ultra-short streaming platforms are directly tapping on the TikTok craze. Neither the storyline nor the way the videos matter much, and the emphasis lies on gripping the users’ attention within seconds, and keeping them hooked for hours.
While the trend reportedly started in China during the pandemic, the craze of these smartphone-friendly streaming services is quickly catching up elsewhere, especially in India.
