Disney+ Hotstar, the service owned by Disney India, has announced a slate of short-format shows that will be available on the service starting 7 May. These include love story Chattis Aur Maina starring Sandeepa Dhar and Vikram Singh Chauhan, detective series Mukesh Jasoos starring Poonam Dhillon and Rahul Bagga, murder mystery Six starring Mandira Bedi and Nauheed Cyrusi, comedy Teen Do Paanch starring Shreyas Talpade, thriller Crime Next Door featuring Yashpal Sharma, Mohan Kapur, Rajendra Gupta, Girish Kulkarni and Anupriya Goenka, among others.

Short-format content is increasingly gaining traction among Indian OTT audiences. In 2018, Eros Now, the Eros International Plc owned video-on-demand service, had rolled out a new category called Eros Now Quickie, which included mini-series with 8-10 minute narratives each that played out over 8-10 episodes and multiple seasons. Direct-to-home television company Tata Sky Ltd had also announced a partnership with Shorts TV, a London-based television channel dedicated to short films.

Disney+ Hotstar has around 25 million paid users out of Disney’s global total of 94.9 million, the company said in February this year. Meanwhile, rival US streaming giant Netflix was estimated to close 2020 with 4.6 million paid subscribers in India, according to a recent analysis by Media Partners Asia (MPA), an independent provider of research, advisory and consulting services across media, telecom, sports and entertainment industries in Asia Pacific.

In March 2020, Hotstar, the video streaming service of the Star network, was rebranded as Disney+ Hotstar in India and a few other Asian markets. Elsewhere, the service is known as Disney+. Walt Disney reported revenues of $1.62 billion for the quarter ended 2 January. However, a downside to the growth in subscriber base, with much of it coming from unpaid users in Asia. That has led to a drop in average revenue per user (Arpu), which fell 28% to $4.03 this quarter for the service in all markets.