ShareChat CBO Neha Markanda decodes India’s microdrama boom

ShareChat and Moj's newly released "State of Microdrama in India" report, produced with Kantar, makes a bold claim: microdrama viewing in India is now "at par" with reels, with 80% of respondents preferring the 2-5 minute episodic format, 86% watching 15-plus minutes a day, and brand recall scores as high as 84%.

ShareChat's Chief Business Officer Neha Markanda sat exclusively with exchange4media to offer an inside look at the numbers behind the report, from how the study was designed, to what it reveals about audience behaviour, to where the format is headed next!

On independence: "There is zero interference from our end"

Given ShareChat commissioned the study, how does it stay credible with advertisers? Markanda was direct.

"The whole idea of bringing credibility was to therefore pick it up with the leader in market research like Kantar as opposed to mounting our own internal survey. Whether it is sampling, whether it is the methodology, whether it is interactions with the user base, ShareChat and Moj have no role to play. The only role that we have is to sort of give them a hypothesis or a set of questions and after that, it's really up to the expert hands of Kantar, there is zero interference from our end on either the process or the outcomes."

She added that the findings don't uniformly flatter the platform. "There are numbers that will obviously sort of show ShareChat and Moj as the best, and then there will be numbers where that may not be the case. And that is really the idea, because we're all learning together." She also pointed to internal metrics as corroboration rather than replacement. ShareChat clocks "close to 900 million views per day" on microdrama, with users spending "close to 55 minutes per day," which she said lines up with Kantar's finding that 86% of viewers fall into medium-to-heavy usage bands.

On the "80% prefer microdrama" claim

Asked whether the 80% preference figure is backed by actual behavioural data rather than stated survey preference, Markanda leaned on internal numbers.

"We are seeing about 80 sessions a month per user. That roughly points to 2-3 sessions a day, so we have seen a 15-minute session and then 3 times a day sort of a pattern play out." On whether the format has genuinely reached reels-level scale, she was candid. "Bear in mind that we are 8 months old as microdramas as a format. It took OTT etc. close to a decade to get to 100 million users. We are already 100 million users as a format. ShareChat alone has 60% of that reach at 60 million users."

She framed the headroom using China as a benchmark. "In China 70% of the population is now watching microdramas. Today at 100 million we are about 10% of the population. So the headroom for growth and explosive growth is massive. Are we there exactly today? No, but it is not a fair comparison because this is an 8-month-old format."

On the “100% ad-playback” figure

The report shows microdrama ad playback at 100%, matching forced-exposure long-form content. Markanda offered a behavioural read.

"This points to the leaned-in watching behavior of the audience. They are so invested and hooked and finding the content so binge-worthy that they are sticking on and showing that commitment to completing the show, when the ad comes, there is a willingness to consume it in its entirety." On format mechanics, she confirmed both options exist but skewed toward one.

"There are both skip and non-skip options. But largely currently we've seen the non-skip version works very well and users are not finding it obtrusive or unnatural."

Markanda also detailed a companion feature called "Shop the Scene," designed to capitalize on in-episode interest without breaking the viewing experience.

"We don't make it clickable there because that's the last thing you want, for the user experience to get spoiled while they're watching. So we're respecting that choice of the user, and also making sure the advertiser doesn't feel it was a blink and a miss."  She added that the format's built-in cliffhangers do double duty for engagement and ad receptivity.

On discovery dependency and competitive moat

With 77% of discovery happening via social feeds, and Instagram, YouTube Shorts and others chasing the same format, Markanda argued that dependency is the moat, not a vulnerability.

"The fact that 77% discovery is happening on the social media feed and we ourselves are at our core a social media platform helps us create a very powerful, self-sufficient ecosystem. Our AIML models are working to provide the right recommendation for the right people."

On the "low commitment, high churn" reading of instant hooks and dip-in-dip-out viewing, she pushed back with a stickiness stat. "The churn that we are noticing is only 25% of the 100 exposures, there is 75% stickiness, and heavy stickiness because then those 75% are watching 80 episodes."

On competition and monetization

Asked to benchmark against Kuku TV, Pocket FM, Chorus and ReelShort, Markanda welcomed the crowded field as validation. "It's a highly competitive landscape right now, that speaks to the fact that this is no longer just a media fad, it's a media disruption, it's a new media format." On revenue, she disclosed early but meaningful traction.

"Monetization began 6-8 months back for us and we today are at about 30% of our revenue comes from microdrama. We are still early on our journey because we are largely monetizing through subscription and ads. Rewarded ads, pay-per-episode, are yet to see the scale and explosion, but we are going to be launching and scaling all of these soon."

On sample representativeness and the brand-impact numbers

On whether regions like the North-East were adequately represented, Markanda deferred to Kantar but offered a candid read on where supply currently outpaces demand.

"We are still seeing the HSM belt kind of do very well, the southern markets again are doing pretty well for us, but I wouldn't draw too much of an inference from that yet because these are still early days. It is more a thing about the supply keeping up with the demand."

On whether brand-impact numbers from just two test ads can support an industry-wide claim, she was philosophical. "Even if I had done a 100 creatives or gone to a lakh consumers, it would still be a tiny speck in a wide, wide ocean. India is huge, and that's how complex it is. However, this is the reality and the truth for the sample that was picked up, and the sample was strong enough for Kantar to put its name to it."

On the income-segment adoption pattern

The report shows lower-income audiences adopted microdrama earliest, while higher-income cohorts show faster recent growth, seemingly at odds with the "catching up among premium audiences" framing. Markanda cautioned against reading too much into it yet. "I don't want to oversimplify this particular finding, these were all hypotheses. This is a finding which needs to be probed more."

She reframed the pattern geographically rather than purely by income: "What we have seen is that when microdrama came to the country it was largely a format that saw far more rapid adoption by tier 2, tier 3 markets, whereas we do know that OTT watching is far more entrenched in tier 1 markets."

For her, that's a signal rather than a caveat. "It tells you that this is a paying audience potentially, or this is a potentially transacting audience, or it's a potentially well-aware audience that is opening up a consumption opportunity."