Mumbai, December 05, 2025: Deepstory has officially launched as India’s newest UI/UX-led short-video platform, built on emotional clarity, intentional discovery and a fresh way of consuming content. At a time when social feeds push users through rapid mood swings, Deepstory offers a calmer, more structured experience that lets people stay with one idea before choosing the next. The platform uses a simple flow. Swiping left reveals more videos on the same topic. Swiping up opens something new. This shift turns scattered viewing into a more thoughtful and human-centred experience.
The product is rooted in research that began long before sideways-storytelling became an industry trend. A proof of concept was created in 2021 for early-stage investor conversations, followed by company registration and R&D in 2022 with a small founding team exploring a topic-driven model for short videos. Deepstory officially launched the beta app in November 2024. The platform saw strong initial adoption until April 2025, when retention dropped because the first version of its left-swipe algorithm struggled to surface the right follow-up videos. The team chose to rebuild the system entirely, shifting to vector intelligence and adding external trend signals. This transition temporarily reduced user numbers but dramatically improved recommendations. With the new system now live, Deepstory is finally ready for mainstream scale.
Founder and CEO, Raj Aryan Das says the platform was created to solve a fundamental problem in today’s short-video consumption. “Short-video apps today throw people from comedy to politics to heartbreak in seconds — it creates emotional whiplash. Deepstory fixes that. A left swipe shows you different creators talking about the same topic from different angles, so you can stay with what interests you instead of being dragged around by randomness. We built Deepstory to make scrolling calmer, intentional, and built for understanding.”
For creators, Deepstory offers a fairer discovery system anchored in equal opportunity. Every left swipe is an open slot that any high-fit creator can win, regardless of follower count. Users see a mix of creators within the same topic, so emerging voices can appear right beside big names whenever their content is most relevant. This leads to organic, topic-led growth rather than algorithm chasing. Deepstory is also building a creator-first monetisation model with low fees, direct brand partnerships and its upcoming Motion Image format that adds cinematic movement to still photographs.
On the business front, Deepstory is building a pull-based advertising model. Every left swipe gives a real-time intent signal, enabling brand stories to appear in topic loops where attention is already focused. Industry data shows contextual, in-topic advertising delivers 30–40 percent higher click-through rates and significantly stronger purchase intent than non-contextual ads. The contextual advertising market is expected to grow sharply over the next five years, driven by user demand for relevance and privacy. Deepstory’s topic-first system positions the platform strongly within this shift.
Co-founder and MD, Satyabrata Das brings four decades of industry experience to this venture. Widely regarded as one of the most connected voices in Indian media, he has led promotions at ETV, shaped ZEE5 and Zee Digital, served as India COO at Mediakeys France, and is currently serving as Chief Alliance Officer at Laqshya Media Group. “I believe the timing is perfect. People do not dislike short videos. They dislike the chaos around them. Deepstory brings structure and a sense of mental space. It also gives creators a true level playing field because relevance decides who appears next. For brands, it becomes easier to tell stories when the user’s mind is already on the topic,” said Das.
Deepstory’s approach is now being validated by global platforms. Several major social platforms, including Meta, are testing linked-posts formats where creators can manually attach their next video. Sideways storytelling has been part of Deepstory’s foundation since the early research years, well before it entered the broader industry narrative. The key difference is structural. A left swipe on Deepstory does not lock a viewer into one creator’s sequence. It opens the topic to all creators, giving them an equal chance to be discovered. This timeline itself is important, as Deepstory was developing sideways-storytelling long before it became an industry conversation.
The technical foundation that enables this sits later in the story but remains essential. Deepstory’s vector-intelligence engine maps videos into a dense topic space using metadata, sound, narrative cues and visual objects. A left swipe triggers a search for high-fit follow-up videos based on meaning and mood, filtering out duplicates and irrelevant clips. An up swipe opens new but related themes. This is only the first step in a longer UX roadmap. New layers, features and topic-based discovery tools will continue to build on this foundation.
Early numbers show strong adoption. Nearly 19.7 percent of all actions on the homescreen are left swipes, signalling that users prefer deeper topic-first exploration. The platform maintains a 17.8 percent view-through rate, which the team sees as evidence of intentional, not passive, viewing. Music edits, film edits, informational content, motivational videos and Formula One edits are among the strongest categories.
