The Indian OTT universe is now estimated to be at 664.9 million (66.49 crore) users, representing about 45 per cent of the country’ population, estimates by media consulting firm Ormax Media revealed. This represents 11 per cent growth over 2025 from 601.2 million (60.12 crore) consumers.
Based on a sample size of 15,000 respondents across urban and rural India, the research was conducted in June and July of 2026. The report defines an OTT audience as anyone who watched at least one online video (free or paid) during the past month.
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 per cent growth over 148.2 million in 2025. “India’s active Connected TV user base at 206.9 million, which reflects a staggering growth of 60% over 2025,”the report noted.
Nearly 44 cities in India have an OTT audience that is 1 million or more in size. Also, 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 million,”it noted. 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.
Shailesh Kapoor, Founder & CEO, Ormax Media, said: “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.”