EloElo Raises $80M With NBCUniversal Backing for Indian Microdramas

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EloElo, the Indian company behind the microdrama app Story TV, has raised $80 million from Hornbill Capital and NBCUniversal. The format draws huge audiences in India, but turning viewers into paying customers is harder.

Many watch, few pay

Story TV offers monthly, quarterly and yearly subscriptions to unlock content. It also has some free titles supported by ads, which, according to reports, may earn less than subscriptions.

Paying viewers are the weak spot in India: users often stick around for free content, and few convert to paid. Analyst firm Redseer estimates that over 40 million people have bought a microdrama at some point, yet just 15 to 17 million keep paying each month. A separate Ormax Media survey found that 72% of people have never paid for one.

Rivals include YouTube, Instagram and TikTok, where creators post for free. Founder Saurabh Pandey thinks quality content on the platform will win users over. The company points to partnerships such as the one with Indian TV producer Balaji Telefilms.

Dolphin AI and a human at the wheel

Story TV has its own Dolphin AI platform. The tool was first built in-house to make video creation easier, and EloElo now plans to make it widely available. Its website describes an editor with templates and several models for images, audio and video. The company also sees it being used for marketing campaigns and ads.

Pandey says human involvement remains paramount. "AI is a really fast race car where AI is the engine, but you need an extremely capable Formula One driver," he said.

EloElo has 240 employees and wants to enlarge its AI and machine learning research team. A good chunk of the capital is also going to more original titles.

The round and the audience

The Series C brings total fundraising to $130 million, at a $500 million valuation. MIT Investment Co. joined, as did existing investors Play Ventures, Kalaari Capital, Waterbridge Ventures and Griffin Gaming Partners.

More than 118 million users watch microdramas in India every month, and analysts expect the industry to cross $3 to $4 billion in annual revenue by 2030. Analysts put Story TV at over 33 million active users. Its catalog has over 5,000 titles in six languages. Pandey says users log 95 minutes a day on average, spread over several sessions.

Besides microdramas, EloElo runs the vertical video learning app Master and the AI companion app Voxy AI. It says its apps reach more than 40 million monthly users in total. It did not split the figure by app, but most of those users are on Story TV.

Our Take

NBCUniversal now holds a stake in a company working in a format that celebrities such as Issa Rae, James Franco and Kim Kardashian have also backed or starred in. The harder question is conversion. With most viewers unwilling to pay, subscription numbers will say more about EloElo than user counts, and the company would have to be the one to publish them.

Source: TechCrunch