Mumbai, September 8, 2026: Media consulting firm Ormax Media has released the sixth edition of The Ormax OTT Audience Report: 2026, India’s largest study to size and profile the country’s OTT universe. Based on a robust sample size of 15,000 respondents across urban and rural India, the research was conducted in June and July of 2026.
While the full report is available on subscription, Ormax Media shared select highlights. The Indian OTT audience universe is now estimated at 664.9 million (or 66.49 Crore) people, representing 45% of the country’s population. The report defines an OTT audience as anyone who watched at least one online video (free or paid) during the past month. India’s OTT universe has grown by 11%, from 601.2 Mn in 2025. The report breaks down this universe by gender, age, media affluence, pop strata, states, and cities.
The report estimates the total number of active paid OTT subscriptions (defined as used at least once in the last one month) at 172.6 million, including subscriptions through telecom bundles and OTT aggregators. Paid subscriptions have seen a 16% growth vis-à-vis 148.2 Mn in 2025. The report pegs India’s active Connected TV user base at 206.9 million, which reflects a staggering growth of 60% over 2025.
Some of the other key highlights from the report are:
- 44 cities in India have an OTT audience that is 1 million or more in size.
- The average time spent by an average OTT audience in India, including time spent on watching videos on social media, micro drama platforms and FAST channels, is 14.9 hours per week, which translates into total annual watch time of 517 billion hours of video consumption.
- India has a monthly active user base of 227.3 million audio streamers, of which 15.0 million pay for audio streaming services.
- FAST channels consumption is beginning to find an audience in India, with an estimated audience size of 35.2 Mn.
- Micro Dramas, K-Dramas, and Anime have emerged as the fastest-growing content formats, with 50%, 48% and 32% growth in their audience size respectively.
Speaking about the evolution of the report over the last six years, Shailesh Kapoor, Founder & CEO, Ormax Media, said: “Since its launch in 2021, The Ormax OTT Audience Report has become a definitive and credible source of independent audience data for India’s streaming ecosystem. Each edition has evolved with the market, adding greater depth and business relevance for platforms, advertisers, content creators, and investors. The rapid rise of CTV is now reshaping India from a predominantly smartphone-led digital video market into a two-screen ecosystem, making audience behaviour more layered and complex, which makes this report more relevant than ever before.”
The 2026 edition of the report includes several new parameters, widening the scope of the report. Speaking about this, Keerat Grewal, Head: Business Development (Streaming, TV & Brands), Ormax Media, said: “The 2026 edition is our most comprehensive OTT audience report yet. Along with a detailed CTV deep-dive, it introduces new sections on FAST channel consumption, and e-commerce behaviour across 12 app categories and nine shopping sub-categories. These additions broaden the report beyond content and platform usage, offering a richer view of the digital consumer and creating new opportunities to connect audience behaviour with business and monetisation outcomes.”
The full report is available on subscription to streaming platforms, advertisers, media agencies, investors, production houses, and other stakeholders in India’s OTT ecosystem.
About Ormax Media:
Headquartered in Mumbai, Ormax media is India’s first specialized media analytics & consulting firm. Using its proprietary consumer research, forecasting and data analytics tools, Ormax media provides strategic solution for businesses operating in media & entertainment sector in India, in areas such as content testing, campaign tracking, brand equity research, audience and category understanding among others. Since its inception in 2008, Ormax media has built a slate of more than 20 proprietary products in the areas of forecasting, modelling and business analytics that are used extensively by the industry as a gold-standard in decisions related to content selection, brand & content strategy and strategic business investments.
Ormax Media partners with more than 85 leading media & entertainment brands in India, including JioStar, Zee, Times Network, Sony Pictures Networks, Amazon Prime Video, JioHotstar, Yash Raj Films, Dharma Productions and many others.
