STARTUPS

One More Episode: The Story of EloElo

By Thanushree

Eloelo Group
Eloelo Group

It's late. You're in bed, thumb hovering over the screen, telling yourself you'll sleep after this one.

On the screen, a woman discovers her husband's secret marriage. A door slams. The music swells. The episode cuts off one second before the truth comes out.

And you tell yourself, just one more.

You are not alone. That small habit, repeated across millions of phones, just raised $80 million.

The Bet

Rewind to 2020. In Bengaluru, a former Flipkart executive named Saurabh Pandey was starting a company called EloElo. He had a bet, and it was a simple one.

The next billion Indians, he believed, would meet entertainment on their phones first. They would want it in their own language. And they would want it in episodes short enough to fit into the gaps of a busy day: a bus ride, a tea break, the last few minutes before sleep.

Few were convinced. But Pandey kept building.

What the Bet Became

Today, that company runs Story TV, which it calls India's No. 1 micro-drama platform.

And the numbers show how far the bet has travelled:

Ninety-five minutes a day. For many of those viewers, that's the whole stretch of the evening, spent one minute at a time.

The Three-Hour Problem

But there was a problem hiding inside the success. A new drama every three hours is a punishing pace. Somewhere, someone has to write it, shoot it, and ship it, then start again before the clock runs out.

You can't do that the old way.

So EloElo didn't. It built its own AI production engine instead. Dolphin AI (by EloElo Group) now helps the company create content faster and cheaper. That, the company says, is how it has grown on profitable unit economics.

The result is a rare kind of control. EloElo now owns all three layers: the content, the platform, and the AI that helps make it.

One More Episode: The Story of EloElo

Source: Eloelo group

The Big Moment

Then, this week, came the announcement. EloElo had raised an $80 million Series C, led by Hornbill Capital and NBCUniversal, the company behind Universal Pictures and DreamWorks.

Think about that for a moment. A studio that made some of the biggest films in the world was now betting on one-minute dramas from Bengaluru.

The total raised so far now stands at $130 million. And the money has a clear purpose: more original shows in Indian languages, and a launch outside India, including the US.

The Twist

For a long time, most people dismissed the format. Cheap, they said. Silly.

But somewhere between the betrayals and the cliffhangers, a billion small moments added up. And a format few took seriously is now a global industry.

Which brings us back to you, in the dark, thumb over the screen.

Just one more? Perhaps the best cliffhanger is the one still unfolding: where will EloElo go next?