How a Kyiv Studio Wagered on the Vertical Drama
Holywater wasn’t born as a TV business. It was in 2020 that Bogdan Nesvit and Anatolii Kasianov founded the studio in Kyiv, Ukraine, and its portfolio even now reads more like a mobile entertainment laboratory than a streaming network. My Passion is for books, My Muse is for AI, and FreeBits rounds out the family beside My Drama. That breadth is telling, since it describes a company that treats video as one of several consumer products rather than its whole identity. Ultimately, it put its bet on the vertical drama, a format that began in China as duanju and is framed 9:16 for a phone held upright. For a small Ukrainian firm, this was a bold market to enter, because reelshort online the genre’s biggest names were supported by Chinese and Singaporean groups.
Spring 2024: The My Drama App Goes Live
During spring 2024, the My Drama app launched, although the exact date varies with which record you believe. The launch date differs by source: TechCrunch put it in April, Google Play lists March 13, 2024, and the App Store shows May 9, 2024. Those store dates indicate that Android was first, with the iPhone version following about two months later. The genre’s most popular tropes shaped the first slate. Most of what you need to know about the style is clear in early titles such as The Shy Beauty and the Billionaire Beast and Love Captive to a Mafia Boss. The partner it would soon be making them with, not the stories themselves, is what ultimately made it stand out.
Fox, $22M in Fresh Funding and a Webby Award
The month My Drama stopped being a startup curiosity was October 2025. Under a deal that came with a commitment to produce more than 200 vertical titles over two years, Fox Entertainment took an equity stake in Holywater. Billionaire Blackmail, Bound by Obsession and My Heart’s Offside are among the Fox-produced titles on the app. A $22M funding round led by Horizon Capital followed three months later, in January 2026, when Holywater raised the money. A Webby Award for Best Streaming Service from 2025 also belongs to the company, which displays it on its App Store listing. Combined, these milestones hand My Drama something few rivals can boast: a major American studio acting as both shareholder and producer.
My Drama: Key Facts
For readers who only have a minute, the table below is the short version of the story. It pulls together the ownership, legal, platform and pricing details that matter most to a new viewer. The prices are the ones listed in the US App Store as of September 2026. Country, platform and promotion all change them, so read them as a rough guide rather than a firm quote. On Google Play, the source of the install figure, the app lists 5M+ downloads. Which legal entity you deal with is determined by where you live, a detail that is relevant if you ever need to challenge a charge.
| Item | Specifics |
|---|---|
| Parent company | Holywater (established in Kyiv, Ukraine, in 2020) |
| Founded by | Bogdan Nesvit and Anatolii Kasianov |
| Sister apps | My Passion (books), My Muse (AI), FreeBits |
| Contracting entity, US users | XOLY LIMITED (Delaware) |
| Legal entity for other users | Holy Water Limited (Nicosia, Cyprus) |
| Release | Spring 2024 (Google Play: March 13; App Store: May 9) |
| Devices | iPhone, iPad, Android, Apple TV (tvOS 18+), Vision Pro and web |
| Installs on Android | Google Play: 5M+ |
| Full access pass | About $19.99 per week, with automatic renewal |
| Coin packs | Around $4.99 to $24.99 |
| Premium tier | Roughly $4.99 to $9.99 |
| Production partner | Fox Entertainment, equity stake held since October 2025, 200+ titles over two years |
| Funding | $22M in January 2026, led by Horizon Capital |
| Honors | 2025 Webby Award, Best Streaming Service |
What It Feels Like to Watch My Drama
The central experience is the one the whole category is built on. Episodes are vertical, framed for a phone held upright, and in this genre they usually last a minute or two before a cliffhanger propels you to the next one. A single story can quietly eat up an evening in short bites, since series often run anywhere from 20 to 100 episodes. The range of screens it supports is where this drama app really stands out. Besides iPhone, iPad and Android, it is listed for Apple TV on tvOS 18 or later and for Vision Pro. This big-screen option is rarer than you might think: for comparison, ReelShort’s App Store listing shows no Apple TV version at all. The option converts a solo phone habit into something a couple can enjoy together, even though a 9:16 frame will never fill a widescreen television.
Content-wise, the catalog combines Holywater’s own early productions with the growing Fox slate. Titles like Billionaire Blackmail and Bound by Obsession show that the Fox releases stay close to the genre’s established formula. Scale is the honest caveat here. The app displays 5M+ installs on Google Play, a small fraction of the 100M+ that ReelShort, DramaBox and ShortMax each list. This gap makes clear where My Drama stands in 2026, as a well-funded challenger rather than the category leader.
Pricing: What My Drama Costs in 2026
The key figure is the weekly pass, one of the three ways Holywater sells access. In the US App Store as of September 2026, “My Drama: Full Access” costs about $19.99 a week. The weekly passes from ReelShort, ShortMax, DramaWave and GoodShort are listed at about the same price in the same store, which places My Drama level with them. Coin bundles, which are used to unlock individual episodes, range from about $4.99 to $24.99. Lighter viewers have less expensive entry points than the full pass, as a separate Premium tier is listed at around $4.99 to $9.99. Prices vary by country, platform and promotion, so the figure on your own device may be different. Until you cancel it, the weekly subscription keeps renewing, as its rivals’ plans do. Four renewals of a $19.99 weekly pass come to roughly $80 a month, so do the arithmetic before you commit.
Terms Worth Knowing Before You Pay
The terms of use for My Drama contain fine print worth more attention than most viewers give it. Since coin purchases are final, there is no easy refund if a series disappoints after you unlock it. In addition, coins are forfeited after 12 months of inactivity, so a balance you ignore for a year can simply disappear. A 14-day right of withdrawal applies to viewers in the EU and UK, reflecting the consumer rules in those markets. Whatever you buy on the web is described as non-refundable except where the law requires otherwise. The key point of all: the terms state plainly that deleting the app does not cancel your subscription. On an iPhone you cancel under Settings, then your name, then Subscriptions, while Android users use the Subscriptions menu in Google Play. For store purchases, refunds are processed by Apple or Google, not by Holywater.
Understanding exactly who sits on the other side of the contract is useful too. US users deal with XOLY LIMITED, a Delaware company, while everyone else contracts with Holy Water Limited in Nicosia, Cyprus. One more warning applies here as much as to any vertical drama app. A site promising modded APKs, unlimited coins or free coin generators is unofficial, and it is not a safe way to watch anything. When the price seems too high, cancel the pass; do not go hunting for a hack.
Our Verdict: A Challenger With Hollywood in Its Corner
My Drama is not the largest vertical drama app, and on install counts it is not close. What it offers instead is an uncommon combination: a Kyiv founding story, a Fox equity partner committed to more than 200 titles, fresh funding from January 2026 and a Webby on the shelf. The practical advantage for viewers is Apple TV support, a feature ReelShort, for one, does not list. As with every rival, the downside is a weekly pass of about $19.99 that keeps renewing quietly in the background. When the largest claimed library is simply what you want, ShortMax, with its 50,000+ dramas, is the more obvious choice. If you are after Fox-produced romance and the option to watch on a TV, the My Drama app earns a place on your home screen. Whichever you pick, cancel through your store account rather than trusting the delete button, and create a reminder the day you subscribe.