Indian entertainment startup EloElo Group has closed an $80 million EloElo Series C funding round led by Hornbill Capital and NBCUniversal. The investment values the Bangalore-based business at $500 million and will fund international expansion, regional language productions and machine learning tools designed to speed up vertical video creation for smartphones.
Key points
- NBCUniversal and Hornbill Capital led the $80 million round, taking EloElo Group’s total equity funding to $130 million at a $500 million valuation.
- Capital will support overseas launches for flagship platform Story TV, original programming across regional Indian languages and engineering hires.
- The company is opening up Dolphin AI, its internal production suite that coordinates text, audio and video models for short-form television.
- India’s microdrama audience exceeds 118 million monthly viewers, but converting mobile audiences into recurring paying subscribers remains an industry-wide challenge.
Backing for vertical television
EloElo Group manages four consumer software products anchored by Story TV, a streaming application that serves scripted drama in vertical episodes lasting around two minutes. The Series C round drew new money from MIT Investment Co. alongside existing venture backers Play Ventures, Kalaari Capital, Waterbridge Ventures and Griffin Gaming Partners. The deal lifts the firm’s total capital raised to date to $130 million.
Saurabh Pandey, an alumnus of Indian e-commerce group Flipkart, established EloElo in 2020. The startup originally offered live social features before turning its focus toward scripted episodic video. Story TV now holds a library of more than 5,000 serialised titles across six languages, recording more than 33 million active users. Across its four applications, EloElo claims more than 40 million monthly active users and 300 million total app installations.
Pandey told TechCrunch that audiences spend an average of 95 minutes each day on Story TV across multiple visits. Viewers, he argued, “will grow up on a diet of watching content on their phones” rather than tuning in for traditional broadcast schedules.
The arrival of NBCUniversal as a co-lead investor highlights how Western media groups are tracking mobile-native narrative entertainment. The vertical microdrama structure first expanded rapidly in China before gaining traction across North America and South Asia. Global market forecasts from media analysts at Omdia suggest worldwide revenue from the format will hit $14 billion by the end of 2026.
Automating production with Dolphin AI
Releasing thousands of short episodes requires high turnaround speeds. To manage development costs and accelerate scheduling, EloElo created Dolphin AI, a proprietary software platform that assists with script generation, visual storyboards, image rendering, synthetic audio and video editing.
Company headcount stands between 200 and 240 staff, with roughly ten engineers originally assigned to the tool. EloElo plans to use the new funding to recruit across generative AI, data science and compute infrastructure. The company intends to open Dolphin AI to third-party commercial studios and advertising agencies, capitalising on rising demand for scalable generative AI infrastructure across digital media pipelines.
While competing teams such as Dashverse are testing automated clip generation using video models, Pandey insisted that human showrunners must guide output. Explaining the system, he said “AI is a really fast race car where AI is the engine, but you need an extremely capable Formula One driver” to steer the creative direction.
Beyond Story TV and Dolphin AI, EloElo runs Master, a vertical microlearning service that rivals Indian educational apps like Seekho, and Voxy AI, an artificial intelligence companion agent. The broader commercial plan involves controlling intellectual property creation, automated rendering infrastructure and final mobile distribution under one roof.
Expanding microdramas beyond India
India is one of the world’s most active digital media markets, supported by cheap mobile connectivity and more than one billion internet subscribers. Research from gaming and media fund Lumikai indicates that domestic interactive media and microdrama turnover could reach $3 billion to $4 billion in annual sales by 2030.
To protect its content pipeline, Story TV works with more than 90 commercial production houses. That roster includes a creative partnership with veteran television studio Balaji Telefilms to translate domestic soap-opera conventions into high-tempo mobile episodes. The app contends with domestic rivals such as Kuku TV and Quick TV, alongside free video platforms including YouTube Shorts, Instagram Reels and TikTok.
EloElo plans to use its new balance sheet to launch Story TV in international territories, hiring local actors and creative writers in target overseas markets. Western viewers have already demonstrated a willingness to pay microtransactions on similar apps, where cliffhanger endings unlock subsequent episodes behind small paywalls.
Monetisation hurdles in mobile entertainment
Converting casual mobile viewership into reliable revenue remains a difficult task in India. EloElo uses a blended business model featuring ad-supported streaming alongside weekly, quarterly and annual subscription tiers. However, free ad-funded video delivers significantly lower financial returns than upfront digital subscriptions, according to market data on advertising in Indian microdramas.
Findings from advisory firm Redseer show that while more than 40 million Indian mobile users have bought microdrama episodes at least once, only 15 million to 17 million maintain recurring monthly payments. A separate survey by Ormax Media found that 72% of viewers in the country have never spent money on the format, opting entirely for promotional tokens and ad-supported tiers.
With backing from NBCUniversal, EloElo secures financial backing and institutional access to an established international media distributor as it tries to convert viewers outside its domestic base into recurring paying customers.
What happens next
EloElo Group will allocate the capital toward expanding its artificial intelligence and platform engineering teams in Bangalore while evaluating candidate overseas launch markets for Story TV. The business also intends to begin external testing for Dolphin AI over the coming months, allowing partner studios and marketing agencies to build vertical video campaigns on top of its proprietary toolset.
