iWorld
Case Study: When short-form video enables long-form video
Mumbai: What is the most strikingly common feature between “Mirzapur: Season two,” “Bigg Boss: Season 15,” and the Indian Premier League (IPL) 2021? All three are big-ticket, entertaining OTT releases in the past year. But an even more compelling factor is that they have captured the attention of the audiences via multiple campaigns hosted on short-video app Josh. This is significant of a larger pattern, wherein, OTT platforms are now seeing the increasing benefit in reaching out to the audiences through homegrown short-video apps.
Onset of Josh’s OTT saga
India has a voracious appetite for video content. The success story of these offerings showcases the fact that both short-form and long-form videos are proactively meeting the content needs of users across the country. The video content boom, which began in the early days of the pandemic, with nearly 350 million people consuming videos online in India, will only rise upwards. As per a Bain & Company report, it is further expected to reach 600 – 650 million in 2025. While short-form videos provide users with snackable content that is quick and easy to consume, long-form video caters to their need for in-depth content with a lengthier viewing experience.
A new trend to have emerged in recent times is that OTT platforms are leveraging these consumption patterns in collaboration with short-video platforms to promote their own content and reach wider audiences. This is where Josh’s saga with popular OTT platforms begins. The app has crafted and curated some of the most successful campaigns using hashtags, soundboards, filters, and influencers to promote a variety of web series, movies, sports leagues, and reality shows.
Promoting Web Series
In a long-standing partnership with Amazon Prime Video, Josh has promoted several popular Prime productions such as “Mirzapur season 2,” “Sherni,” “Jai Bhim,” “Sarpatta” and “Malik.” The partnership boasts spectacular results with the most popular campaign gaining 170+ million video views, 5.5K UGC videos, and 15+ million hearts.
Furthermore, Josh’s partnership with Voot has resulted in exciting campaigns for the new season of the popular reality TV show “Bigg Boss.” Two campaigns, the #BiggBoss15AsliFan and the #BiggBossOTTChallenge, were launched to promote season 15. With unique soundboards specific to different local languages, dynamic filters, and hashtags to enhance top-of-the-mind recall, they garnered a total of 654+ million video views, 30K+ UGC videos, and 51+ million hearts.
What is interesting is that Josh’s campaign trail is not limited to web series, but also covers other genres of entertainment such as music, movies, and sports, among others.
Amplifying sport challenges
Sports shows have an inbuilt tendency to attract audience frenzy. With its reach and power of amplification, Josh added to the existing thrill with some popular campaigns.
For the Abu Dhabi T-10 League on Voot, Josh created filters, in-video transitions, and a theme song. The challenge succeeded in its mission of engagement, garnering 272+ million video views, 12+ K UGC videos, and 21+ million hearts. To organically promote the latest season of IPL and the anthem created by Nucleya for the teams with Disney+ Hotstar, an influencer-led campaign titled #IndiaKiVibeAlagHai was created. Best of Josh’s creators were given free reign to choose the team they wanted and amplify the tournament on the app. The campaign garnered 16+ million video views, 50+ influencer videos, and 310+K hearts.
When the Pro Kabaddi League returned to our screens for its latest edition on Star Sports, the app promoted it via a fun and engaging #LePanga challenge. Creating a sport-centric hook step, a dynamic filter, a catchy soundboard, the campaign garnered 179+ million video views, 5.9+ K UGC videos and 13.9+ million hearts.
The power of Bharat’s short video
As a homegrown short-video app, Josh has held an understanding of local context. Using its tact of connecting effortlessly with local audiences, it helped create a captivating campaign for Zee Bangla’s show “Uma.” With the hashtag #UmaChallenge, which is based on the show’s theme of cricket, female users were asked to balance a ball on a bat for 10 seconds. The app helped the platform reach out to a vast Bengali user base in the country creating over eight million video views, 140+ UGC videos, and 630+ K hearts.
Summing the impact of Josh’s local reach, VerSe innovation chief revenue officer Sunil Kumar Mohapatra said, “As a homegrown short-video app, we understand the users of Bharat and their content needs. As OTT platforms increasingly meet the local language content needs of Bharat, we, at Josh, by leveraging our talented creator community and our understanding of the local context are enabling these platforms to reach out to wider and relevant audiences, as we operate at the intersection of our user preferences, creators needs, and brand propositions.”
Indeed, short-video platforms are becoming an increasingly viable route for OTT platforms to promote their content largely because of their snackable quality. The method of promotion becomes even more effective given the rise of local language content and homegrown short-video apps that have cracked the code of engagement for such content and its audiences.
iWorld
Netflix celebrates a decade in India with Shah Rukh Khan-narrated tribute film
MUMBAI: Netflix is celebrating ten years in India with a slick anniversary film voiced by Shah Rukh Khan, a nostalgic sprint through a decade that rewired how the country watches stories. The campaign doubles as both tribute and reminder: streaming did not just enter Indian homes, it quietly rearranged them.
Roll back to 2016 and television still dictated schedules. Viewers waited weeks, sometimes months, for favourite films to appear on prime time. Family-friendly filters narrowed options further, and piracy often filled the gaps. Then Netflix arrived, softly but decisively, carrying a catalogue of international titles rarely seen in Indian theatres and placing them a click away. Old blockbusters and new releases suddenly coexisted on the same digital shelf.
The platform’s real inflection point came in 2018 with Sacred Games, a breakout series that refused to dilute India’s grit for global comfort. Audiences embraced its unvarnished tone, signalling readiness for stories that did not need box-office validation or censorship compromises. What followed was a steady procession of relatable narratives. Competitive-exam anxiety fuelled Kota Factory. College relationships unfolded in Mismatched. Everyday pressures, not grand spectacle, proved bankable.
Language barriers thinned as foreign series arrived with Hindi, Tamil and Telugu dubbing, expanding viewership beyond urban English-speaking pockets. Marketing mirrored the shift. For global releases such as Squid Game, Netflix leaned on regional creators and influencers to localise buzz and make international content feel native.
The library widened beyond fiction. Documentaries stepped out of festival circuits into living rooms. Stand-up comedians found scale. Established filmmakers, including Sanjay Leela Bhansali with Heeramandi, embraced the platform’s long-form canvas. Subscriber numbers swelled to 12.37 million in India, according to Demandsage, and behaviour followed suit. Late-night binges became routine. Friday release rituals loosened. Watch parties turned solitary screens into social events.
Economics demanded adjustment. Early subscription pricing carried a premium aura that deterred many households. Over time, Netflix recalibrated plans to align with Indian spending sensibilities, conceding that accessibility is as critical as content. To extend momentum around marquee titles, the platform also experimented with split-season releases, stretching anticipation and watch time.
The anniversary film, narrated by Shah Rukh Khan, captures the linguistic shift that mirrors the cultural one: from “Netflix pe kya dekha?” to “Netflix pe kya dekhein?” The question moved from recounting the past to planning the next binge. In ten years, Netflix morphed from foreign entrant to familiar fixture, exporting Indian stories abroad while importing global ones home. The remote no longer waits; it chooses, clicks and moves on. In the streaming age, patience is out, playlists are in, and the next episode is always one tap away.
e-commerce
Tulasi Mohan Padavala elevated to Associate Director at Blinkit
Gurugram: Blinkit has elevated Tulasi Mohan Padavala to associate director, capping a three-year climb inside the quick-commerce firm and signalling confidence in an executive steeped in ecommerce, category management and on-ground sales execution.
Padavala shared the update publicly, saying he was “happy to share” the promotion, a succinct announcement that nevertheless marks a notable step up within one of India’s fastest-moving delivery platforms. The new role follows nearly three years at Blinkit, where he most recently served as senior category manager from February 2023 to January 2026, focusing on strategic sourcing and assortment planning.
The promotion places Padavala in Blinkit’s mid-to-senior leadership tier at a time when the company continues to expand its rapid-delivery footprint and sharpen category economics. His brief tenure as associate director began in January 2026, with responsibilities expected to span category growth, supplier strategy and cross-functional execution.
Before Blinkit, Padavala spent a short but intensive stint as global ecommerce manager at Wholsum Foods, the parent of Slurrp Farm and Millé, between November 2022 and February 2023. There he worked on digital marketplace expansion and online retail operations, adding a direct-to-consumer and international ecommerce layer to his résumé.
A longer stretch at Amazon shaped much of his cross-border commerce experience. As business development manager for Amazon’s India Global Selling programme from February 2021 to October 2022, Padavala helped Indian D2C brands enter the North American market. His remit ranged from seller recruitment and category revenue management to coordination with industry bodies, regulators and logistics partners. Key outcomes included launching more than 50 D2C consumable brands in the United States, driving a cumulative gross merchandise sales figure of $1m in FY21-22, tripling sales for participating brands during Prime Day through marketing and visibility levers, growing the monthly recurring revenue of more than 10 newly launched sellers from zero to an average $20,000 each, and negotiating ecommerce partnerships that reduced initial launch costs by 20 per cent.
Padavala’s earlier career was forged in the field rather than the dashboard. At Coffee Day Group, he spent close to five years across multiple sales leadership roles. As sales manager in the Greater Delhi Area from July 2019 to January 2021, he led vending-machine and consumables sales for small and medium enterprises with a team of more than 15 assistant and territory sales managers, managed over 2,000 clients, drove upselling and cross-selling, maintained channel partnerships and ensured timely collections. Prior to that, he served as area sales manager in Delhi between May 2018 and June 2019, handling south and east Delhi markets, and earlier in Hyderabad from April 2016 to May 2018, where he led Andhra Pradesh sales for the vending division, supervised service and logistics functions and managed a base of more than 600 machines with a four-member team.
His professional arc began with internships that combined analytics and process improvement. At Boehringer Ingelheim in 2015, Padavala analysed the impact of brand extension on the drug Pradaxa, identified key performance indicators through market research and assessed sales forecasts, recommendations that drew positive responses in pilot studies. Earlier, at Genpact in 2014, he automated manual sales-order backlog reporting using VBA and Excel, increasing efficiency by 800 per cent, and worked on benchmarking metrics within supply-chain planning processes.
From automating spreadsheets to scaling cross-border ecommerce and now steering quick-commerce categories, Padavala’s trajectory tracks the evolution of India’s retail economy itself. Blinkit’s bet is clear: blend data, discipline and delivery speed. The promotion formalises what his career already suggests. In the race for instant commerce, experience that moves from warehouse floors to global dashboards is no longer optional. It is the engine.
e-commerce
Bharatpe plays a super over as Rohit Sharma fronts T20 push
MUMBAI: When the stakes rise and seconds matter, even payments need a match-winning finish. That’s the cue for Bharatpe, which has rolled out Super Over, a nationwide campaign led by Indian cricket captain Rohit Sharma, timed neatly ahead of the ICC Men’s T20 World Cup.
The campaign draws a straight line between the pulse of cricket and the pace of everyday digital payments. A new brand film taps into India’s emotional bond with the game, while positioning UPI as the quiet hero that keeps daily transactions ticking along at match speed.
As part of Super Over, users making payments via Bharatpe UPI can bag daily rewards ranging from match tickets and signed merchandise to a chance to watch a T20 World Cup fixture alongside Rohit Sharma himself. Both consumers and merchants are also assured Zillion Coins on every eligible transaction, adding a little extra sparkle to routine payments.
Behind the scenes, Bharatpe is also batting for safety. The platform is backed by Bharatpe Shield, a fraud-protection layer designed to offer enhanced security, comprehensive coverage and dedicated support aimed at helping users transact with greater confidence as digital payments scale up.
Announcing the campaign, Bharatpe head of marketing Shilpi Kapoor said Super Over mirrors the aspirations of everyday Indians, combining speed, security and instant rewards to make UPI transactions feel both reliable and rewarding.
The campaign will play out across digital platforms, social media and on-ground activations nationwide, staying live through the T20 World Cup season proof that in cricket, as in payments, timing is everything.
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