The OTT audience in India has reached about 665 million, nearly one in two people watching online video in a given month. The sixth Ormax OTT Audience Report shows the audience growing 11% in a year, but the sharper stories sit underneath: living-room screens are growing faster than phones, and bite-sized “micro-dramas” are the fastest-growing format on the list.
OTT audience in India: the 2026 numbers
The Ormax OTT Audience Report 2026, published on September 10, counts anyone who watched at least one online video in the past month, free or paid. Ormax surveyed 15,000 people across urban and rural India in June and July.
| Measure | 2026 | 2025 | Change |
| OTT audience | 664.9 million | 601.2 million | +11% |
| Active paid subscriptions | 172.6 million | 148.2 million | +16% |
| Connected TV audience | 206.9 million | 129.2 million | +60% |
| Share of population watching online video | 45% | 41% | +4 points |
The average viewer spends 14.9 hours a week on video across streaming, social platforms, micro-dramas and free ad-supported channels, which adds up to an estimated 517 billion hours a year. Paid subscriptions include plans bundled through telecom operators and aggregators, and 44 Indian cities now have an OTT audience of at least 1 million.
Connected TV is growing fastest
The headline growth is on the big screen. Ormax counts 206.9 million connected TV viewers, up 60% from 129.2 million a year earlier, compared with 11% for OTT overall. Ormax founder Shailesh Kapoor says India is moving toward a “two-screen ecosystem”, with the phone and the TV both in regular use.
Free, ad-supported live channels, known as FAST channels, sit alongside it. Ormax estimates they already reach 35.2 million people, and OTTplay and DistroTV recently announced a tie-up to stream 180 free live channels in India.
Micro-dramas, K-dramas and anime pull ahead
Among formats, micro-dramas grew their audience 50%, ahead of K-dramas at 48% and anime at 32%. Micro-dramas are short, serialised stories made for the phone.
A Storyboard18 analysis of the space lists domestic players Kuku TV, Flick TV and ReelSagas, Chinese-originated apps DramaBox and ReelShort, and Amazon MX Player and Zee, which have launched their own efforts. Real-money gaming platforms Zupee and WinZo have also announced micro-drama initiatives.
Kuku TV leads on the figures that analysis cites, at roughly 37 million monthly users and more than 5 million paid subscribers. Most apps are freemium and earn mainly from small-ticket purchases rather than a monthly plan. Those user counts date from the analysis, not the 2026 Ormax survey.
What the numbers do and don’t say
Two cautions help read the headline. First, “OTT audience” here is broad: it counts anyone who watched any online video in the past month, so social video and free content count alongside Netflix-style services. Second, the 172.6 million paid subscriptions are subscriptions, not people, and they include telecom bundles. Set against 664.9 million viewers, that is roughly one paid subscription for every four viewers, though one person can hold several.
The most useful reading is that growth is shifting from adding viewers to changing where and how they watch: bigger screens, shorter stories and free channels.
