The Rise of Bangladeshi Web Series: How Chorki and Hoichoi Changed Local Storytelling

Four years ago, Bangladeshi audiences looking for local drama beyond terrestrial television had few real options. Today, the country has a genuine streaming ecosystem, and the numbers suggest it is still accelerating: Bangladesh’s OTT market is projected to grow at a compound annual rate of nearly 11 percent through 2029, with sector revenue expected to reach roughly $264 million by 2027.

Chorki, the homegrown platform that has led that growth, marked its fourth anniversary in 2025 having crossed one billion watch hours and 30 million users. Its content strategy — original productions from directors such as Mostofa Sarwar Farooki and Abdullah Mohammad Saad, including titles like Karagar — pushed the platform past 100 original productions by mid-2025 and gave Bangladeshi web series a creative credibility that had mostly eluded the format before.

Chorki’s rise has reshaped the competitive field rather than simply led it. Rival platforms, including Bongo and the Kolkata-based Hoichoi, have responded by investing more heavily in original Bangladeshi-language narratives of their own. Hoichoi in particular has seen its Bangladeshi subscriber base grow from roughly 30,000 in 2019 to an estimated 500,000-plus by 2025, part of a broader climb to 13 million subscribers across more than 100 countries and a reported 40 percent jump in direct subscriptions year-on-year.

What is driving the growth is, by most survey data, a straightforward preference: roughly 70 percent of Bangladeshi streaming users say they favour originals in Bangla over dubbed or subtitled international content. That single statistic explains much of the platforms’ strategy — and suggests Bangladesh’s OTT boom is less about catching up to global streaming trends than about building a distinctly local one.