According to analysts, the number of users in India who watch micro-series dramas each month has exceeded 118 million. As this form of serialization becomes popular in India, Story TV under EloElo has become one of the leading apps in the micro-series drama field, with over 33 million active users.
Based on this scale, the company raised $80 million from Hornbill Capital and NBCUniversal to complete its Series C financing. After this round of financing, the company's total raised funds reached $130 million, with a valuation of $500 million.
Given India's vast internet population of over 1 billion and the strong demand for entertainment content locally, analysts expect the annual revenue of this industry to exceed $3 billion to $4 billion by 2030. Last year, Story TV, Kuku TV, and Quick TV were among the top video streaming apps in terms of downloads in India.
Story TV was founded in 2020 by Saurabh Pandey, a former executive from Flipkart. Pandey stated that due to this "snack-like" content format, users open the app multiple times a day, with a total usage time of up to 95 minutes.
“I fundamentally believe that the next billion users will not grow up in an environment of watching television; they will consume content on their mobile phones. And this content and entertainment must be designed in a very different way. It won’t be programs watched at specific times of day, but rather at certain moments throughout the day. In the past, short videos have solved many of these issues, but serialized narratives have not been addressed,” Pandey said when discussing the form of micro-series.
He believes that watching on large screens will still have its place when spending time with family or friends, but most entertainment consumption will be done through mobile devices.
All micro-series platforms are competing with YouTube, Instagram, and TikTok among others, as creators on these platforms can publish content for free. Some of these platforms are also trying to provide creators with ways to publish serialized content. Pandey believes that producing high-quality content on their platform will attract users to choose Story TV over other free platforms. One of the partnerships mentioned by the company is a collaboration with the Indian television production company Balaji Telefilms to produce content together.
The company offers different subscription plans such as monthly, quarterly, and annual to unlock content. It also provides some free content supported by advertisements, but it is reported that this method of monetization may not be as profitable as the subscription model.
In India, monetization has always been a challenge, as users tend to stick to free content, and not many convert into paying customers. A report by the analytics company Redseer shows that over 40 million people have paid at least once for micro-series, but only 15 to 17 million users continue to pay on a monthly basis. Another survey by Ormax Media indicates that 72% of people have never paid for micro-series.
AI and other layouts
All micro-series platforms hope to have sufficient content supply to attract different audiences and also wish to utilize AI to solve this issue. Some platforms, such as the one supported by Google's Kuku, aim to improve their workflow and produce more content; others, like Shortfree under Dashverse, intend to use video AI models to generate serialized short films.
Currently, Story TV follows the former approach and utilizes its DolphinTV platform. This tool was initially developed internally by the company to improve video production efficiency, but now the company plans to make it widely available to everyone. According to their website description, this tool can be used as an editor with templates and is equipped with various models for generating images, audio, and video.
Pandey believes that creating high-quality stories still cannot do without human involvement, while AI tools are more of an auxiliary in terms of creativity.
“I think that AI is like a very fast racing car, and AI is the engine, but you need an exceptionally talented Formula One driver behind the wheel. For me, that person is the creative director or program coordinator. AI should collaborate with them to enhance their capabilities. AI can help write the stories, but so far, my favorite stories all have a high element of combination between people and AI,” he said.
In addition to micro-series dramas, the company also has a vertical-screen video learning app Master, which competes with Guru under Seekho and Kuku. There is also a companion app Voxy AI. The company states that the total number of monthly active users across its apps exceeds 40 million. Although the company does not break down user numbers by app, the majority of users come from Story TV.
EloElo currently has 240 employees and hopes to hire more in order to expand the size of its AI and machine learning research teams. The company also allocates a considerable portion of its funds to creating more original content.
This round of financing also attracted existing investors Play Ventures, Kalaari Capital, Waterbridge Ventures, and Griffin Gaming Partners to participate in the investment.
