India has developed a love for short microdramas. As Instagram and TikTok reels grew in popularity, they shaped a new habit among viewers who now binge dramas that run just one to two minutes per episode.
According to a report, the global short drama market driven by vertical bite-sized video content has grown to 7.2 billion dollars from 6.5 billion dollars last year, with projections indicating it could double by 2030.
Dashverse is tapping into this trend with a twist, relying on generative AI to power its stories.
The company recently launched Raftaar, India’s first AI-generated microdrama, created using the company’s proprietary generative video platform, Frameo.AI. The series has already crossed 1 million views on the company’s DashReels app.
The 90-minute serialised narrative was produced with Frameo.AI, which the company said reduced production time by 50% and costs by 75% compared to traditional video production. The launch has accelerated DashReels’ growth, with the app surpassing 10 million cumulative installs and generating $2 million in revenue in August.
The company plans to scale production by launching 100 additional AI-generated microdramas by the end of 2025. The premiere of Raftaar came shortly after Dashverse closed a $13 million Series A funding round led by Peak XV Partners with participation from Z47 and Stellaris Venture Partners.
Journey of Dashverse
CTO Soumyadeep Mukherjee told AIM that before founding Dashverse in 2023, he led robotics and infrastructure teams at Udaan. His early exposure to computer vision and robotics convinced him that generative AI would open new creative possibilities.
“My background has been mostly around deep tech and AI, or actually robotics is what I started with,” he recalled. “When generative AI started showing promise in images, I knew this was the space to build in.”
Alongside two co-founders, including a longtime school friend from Bangalore, Mukherjee launched DashToon, an AI-driven webtoon app.
Founded in 2023 with Sanidhya Narain and Lalith Gudipati, the team built DashToon to let users both read vertically scrollable comics and create them through DashToon Studio. The goal was to establish a flywheel where creators could produce, publish, and earn from their work.
Dashverse is not alone. OpenAI is backing the production of an AI-animated feature film called Critterz, created largely using AI tools, including GPT-5 and image-generating models.
Mukherjee said, “The entertainment industry will grow more because there will be more creators, and as the number of creators increases, the market will grow.” He added that the market will see deep AI penetration, and with OpenAI driving much of this, a huge opportunity is in the offing
Tech Stack
Mukherjee said that Dashverse is not building models to compete with Google Veo 3 or OpenAI Sora, but instead layering its strengths on top. “We’re not competing with them; we actually use them. As they get better, we get better. Our expertise is in understanding creators’ needs and bridging the gap between imagination and output.”
Dashverse is one of the largest users of Veo 3 in India, he added.
While competitors like Sora and Veo 3 are advancing video models, Dashverse is focusing on solving two unique challenges — consistency and controllability.
Mukherjee said that their technology ensures that a character looks the same across 100 frames, which is essential for long-form storytelling.
The company has invested heavily in compute infrastructure, including 32 H100 GPUs for training. Inference, however, is handled on the cloud with a custom pipeline. “At least $2 million of our $13 million Series A went into GPUs. Technology development is 70% of our spend,” he revealed.
Team Size and Process
Excluding creators who are on contract, Dashverse is about 30 people strong, Mukherjee said.
On the production side, nearly 80–90% of the workflow, he said, takes place inside Dashverse’s in-house tool. This includes image generation, animation, video assembly on a timeline, and iterative editing to meet creative taste.
Challenges, Adoption, and the Road Ahead
The company’s current focus is on Tier-2 and Tier-3 Indian audiences, who were underserved by mainstream entertainment. “Our content is more a replacement for daily soaps than just short videos,” said Mukherjee.
But challenges remain. “The hardest problem is still the quality of AI-generated content. My holy grail is to make a movie like Inception or Dune with AI. Every day, we push closer by solving consistency, avatars, or orchestration issues. But it’s still a journey.”
Looking ahead, Dashverse wants to open its tools to more creators, expand collaborations with studios, and ultimately dominate the short-drama space. “The intent is to be the largest media house in the world. If we have the creators, we’ll have the consumers.”
Mukherjee acknowledges that the race won’t be easy. “The only fear is not growing fast enough, and someone else beats us to building the first AI micro-drama business.”
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