EloElo secures $80M for Indian microdrama growth
Indian entertainment company EloElo has raised an $80 million Series C led by Hornbill Capital and NBCUniversal, bringing its total funding to $130 million and its valuation to $500 million. The company is betting on demand for microdramas: vertically oriented, serialised video designed for phone-based viewing.
Its Story TV service is among India’s leading dedicated microdrama apps, with more than 33 million active users, analysts say. EloElo says the broader microdrama category reaches more than 118 million monthly viewers in India, where dedicated services including Story TV, Kuku TV and Quick TV ranked among the country’s most downloaded video-streaming apps last year.
Story TV builds a mobile-first catalogue
Founded in 2020 by former Flipkart executive Saurabh Pandey, EloElo has built a Story TV catalogue of more than 5,000 titles in six languages. Pandey said users spend an average of 95 minutes a day in the app over multiple sessions, reflecting a viewing pattern built around short intervals rather than scheduled television.
The company offers monthly, quarterly and annual subscriptions to unlock content, alongside advertising-supported free programming. It has also partnered with Indian television production company Balaji Telefilms to make content. EloElo argues that professionally produced serialised programming can differentiate Story TV from free video platforms such as YouTube, Instagram and TikTok, which also compete for viewers and creators.
Scale does not remove the monetisation challenge
India’s internet population exceeds one billion, and analysts expect the country’s microdrama industry to generate $3 billion to $4 billion in annual revenue by 2030. The market opportunity is therefore substantial, but paid conversion remains a constraint for platforms operating alongside abundant free entertainment.
Redseer estimates that more than 40 million people have paid for a microdrama at least once, while only 15 million to 17 million pay monthly. A separate Ormax Media survey found that 72% of respondents had never paid while watching microdramas. Those figures underline why catalogues, pricing and advertising-supported access will all remain important to operators.
AI tools are part of EloElo’s expansion plan
EloElo is also preparing to make DolphinTV, initially an internal video-production tool, more widely available. Its website describes templates and models for generating images, audio and video, and the company sees potential use cases in marketing campaigns and advertising as well as content production.
Pandey has said that AI should augment creative teams rather than replace creative direction. EloElo also operates the vertical-video learning app Master and AI companion app Voxy AI, and says its apps reach more than 40 million monthly users, with Story TV accounting for most of that audience.
The company employs 240 people and intends to grow its AI and machine-learning research team while allocating a significant share of the new capital to original titles. For businesses assessing mobile entertainment, EloElo’s funding shows that audience scale alone is not enough: a sustainable strategy needs locally relevant supply, disciplined production workflows and a credible route from free viewing to paid revenue.