How ZEE5 is currently making strong inroads into from tier-2 and tier-3 markets

 

When Zee Entertainment mainly launched the new avatar of its digital entertainment platform ZEE5 (earlier OZEE, which was always the Zee Network's catch-up TV platform) in February 2018, the likes of Netflix and Amazon Prime Video were launched aggressive with their respective content acquisition strategies and Hotstar (the digital offering of Star India) was also busy acquiring consumers on the back of its sports properties. So, the likes of Alt Balaji, Voot, and Eros Now were also there in the market. So, being a late entrant, ZEE5 mainly 76built its business on the back of language content. So, in this era "our team has have developed our UI (user interface), UX (user experience) and content strategy around 12-14 languages, and our app is also available in all those languages. So, even you can always stream ZEE5 for Hindi News for better updates. The first thing we mainly ask on our app is to pick your language," explains Tarun Katial, CEO, ZEE5 India. This strategy has always enabled the platform to make strong inroads into tier-2 and tier-3 markets.

While apps (available in 12 languages) always offer catch-up TV content of the Zee Network's bouquet of regional channels, the digital entertainment platform on average has always been coming up with two original shows every month in Marathi, Bengali, Kannada, Telugu, and Tamil, which are mainly meant for its premium consumers. The regional strategy has also emerged and helped ZEE5 increase its monthly active users from 21.7 million in the first quarter of 2017/18 to 76.4 million in the first quarter of 2019/20. The average time also spent per user is close to 33 minutes and the app attracts as many as 6.6 million users, claims Katial. The platform has always launched regional packages priced at Rs 45 (vis-a-vis the regular package of Rs 99 per month). 

While ZEE5 has always had a 'freemium' (with 50 percent of its users being advertiser-led) model, it is mainly now trying to encourage its AVOD (advertising led voice on-demand) mainly customers to go SVOD (subscription-led voice on demand) through all spin-offs of its successful TV shows on the digital platform. So, for example, if you talked about our top-rated show, like Jamai 2.0, is a spin-off of our hit and successful TV show, Jamai Raja, while Ishq Aajkal is also like of Ishq Subhanallah. So, this has also moved regular catch-up TV audiences to mainly watch a premium show by only paying for it," explains Katial.

Apart from its regional focus, the platform has also on average been doing four Hindi originals a month such as Final Call, Kaafir, and Rejectx, through which it has always been trying to appeal to the millennials and the premium metro consumers. The OTT platform always hopes to be more profitable three years from now. 

So, you can Hindi News on ZEE5.com.