India has long been a nation obsessed with storytelling. From the massive crowds gathering for the latest movie releases to entire families reorganizing their schedules around prime-time television dramas, storytelling is deeply woven into the fabric of Indian life. This appetite for stories has found its perfect outlet in two transformative trends: affordable broadband and widespread smartphone use. Together, these have changed how people discover, consume, and engage with content, especially video.
And yet a significant gap remains. Despite a massive $4 billion Over-The-Top streaming market, where content is delivered directly to consumers via the internet, and 600 million users, no platform delivers premium short-form drama in local languages designed for mobile-first audiences.
At General Catalyst, our seed platform backs visionary founders building entirely new categories that capture untapped demand at scale. That’s exactly why we’re excited to co-lead Chai Shots’ seed round, as they address this content gap with short-form storytelling that meets India in the palm of its hand.
Capturing the Mobile-First Content Revolution
Over 81% of Indian streaming viewers watch content exclusively on their smartphones. Yet the market offers only low-quality user-generated clips or dubbed international shows. There is currently nothing in the market that combines premium storytelling with the short-form, mobile-first format audiences prefer.
Chai Shots is addressing this gap as the first platform built specifically for vertical short-form dramas in regional Indian languages, starting with Telugu. Delivering emotionally powerful, culturally grounded storytelling in 60-90 second episodes, Chai Shots seeks to match how audiences actually consume content today.
The platform plans to leverage applied AI throughout their production workflow, allowing the team to meet the scale and speed that the market demands. From script evaluation to dubbing and post-production, Chai Shots’ AI-native production platform is designed to create high-volume, high-quality content at scale while maintaining storytelling standards and controlling costs.
Building on Proven Content DNA
What we believe stands out about co-founders Sharath Chandra and Anurag Reddy is their deep expertise in regional storytelling. They spent the last decade building Chai Bisket, a Telugu-focused content platform that has generated over 2 billion lifetime views, built 5 million YouTube subscribers, and reached 40 million monthly viewers with 1,000+ short films and 30+ vertical dramas. With this proven track record of reaching millions, we think they're uniquely positioned to define this emerging category.
"Chai Shots was born out of a clear shift in consumer behavior. While platforms have proven massive demand for short-form video, the space is still dominated by user-generated content. We believe it's time to elevate the format with the emotional power of fiction at scale, in our languages, on our terms." –Sharath Chandra
We're thrilled to partner with Sharath, Anurag, Krishna, and the Chai Shots team as they build a new entertainment category designed for India's mobile-first audiences.
