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EloElo Raises $80 Million to Make the Cliffhanger a Full-Time Business
· New York time
Indian company EloElo has raised $80 million in a Series C round from Hornbill Capital and NBCUniversal, bringing its total fundraising to $130 million at a reported $500 million valuation. Its Story TV app has more than 33 million monthly active users, according to Sensor Tower figures cited in the reporting. More than 118 million people watch microdramas each month in India. The investment gives a major US media company a stake in a format that has spread across India, China and the United States. These serialized vertical videos make room for drama in the spaces normally reserved for waiting in line or pretending to listen to a meeting. The installments are short, but the audience can keep moving from one to the next. That is a pleasing arrangement for a business built around attention. An ending can arrive quickly, followed just as quickly by another reason not to stop watching. The old television cliffhanger needed a week to build suspense. Its vertical descendant can fit a crisis, a revelation and the invitation to continue into the time it takes to find the remote. The funding reflects interest in the scale of that habit, not proof that every brief episode will become a lasting hit. Still, investors have found a format that treats a spare minute as prime time. The shortest part may be the episode; the ambition behind it is anything but.
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