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India’s EloElo nabs $80M from NBCUniversal to bet on the country’s rising microdrama market
More than 118 million users watch microdramas every month as the serialized format has taken off in India. EloElo’s Story TV is one of the top apps for microdramas, with over 33 million active users, according to analysts.
Banking on that scale, the company has raised $80 million in Series C from Hornbill Capital and NBCUniversal. This round brings its total fundraising to $130 million, with a valuation of $500 million.
As people spend more time on platforms hosting verticalized videos, serialized content has become popular in multiple geographies, including the U.S., China, and India, with Hollywood celebrities like Issa Rae, James Franco, and Kim Kardashian investing in and starring in the format.
Given India’s massive internet population of more than a billion and the country’s appetite for entertainment content, it presents a big market opportunity, with analysts expecting the 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, the Story TV platform has taken off in the last few years with a catalog of over 5,000 titles in six languages. Pandey told TechCrunch that because of the snackable content format, users log 95 minutes on the app on average through multiple sessions in a day.
“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? 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,” Pandey said about the microdrama format.
He believes that there still will be a place for big-screen viewing with family or friends, but the majority of entertainment consumption would be done through mobile.
All microdrama platforms compete against platforms like YouTube, Instagram, and TikTok, where creators are posting content for free. Some of them are also creating a way for creators to post serialized content. Pandey thinks that producing quality content on the platform will entice users to choose StoryTV over other free platforms. The company points to its partnerships, such as the one with Indian TV production company Balaji Telefilms, to produce content.
The company offers different kinds of subscriptions ranging from monthly, quarterly, and yearly to unlock content. It also offers some free content supported by ads, which might not be as lucrative a medium to make money as subscriptions, according to reports.
Monetization is a challenge in India, as users often stick around for free content, but few convert to paid users. A report from analyst firm Redseer indicates that more than 40 million people have paid for microdrama at least once, but only 15-17 million users pay for it on a monthly basis. A separate survey by Ormax Media suggested that 72% of people haven’t ever paid while consuming microdrama.