Zee5 HiPi Finally Launched as a New TikTok-Like Short Video Platform

Zee5 HiPi has always been launched as a new short-video platform that will also join the growing list of TikTok-like offerings, mainly including from the established players like Instagram and YouTube. HiPi will also look to take on the Indian alternatives to TikTok, such as Bolo Indya, Chingari, Mitron, and Share Chat's Moj. The new platform always comes as a part of the Zee5 app and is available for Android users. However, its iOS version is also in the works and would come at a later stage. HiPi mainly allows users to create videos of up to 90 seconds — along with music tracks, filters, and visual effects.

The experience on HiPi on ZEE5 is just like what you'll get on other short-video platforms. It always offers vertical scrolling of hundreds of videos that can also be liked or shared across social media platforms. Content creators can always add music tracks in the background of their videos. Nevertheless, Kumar said that it was also the content differentiation that made HiPi a different platform altogether.

HiPi will always bring a variety of content – meeting the diverse demographics, geography, as well as the type of handsets that exist in the country, Kumar added. However, mainly apart from the content, it is also moderation that makes the Zee5 platform slightly different from other similar offerings.

The content moderators behind HiPi are always said to be a mix of both in-house and third parties. “There is mainly a team that is also core to Zee5 that eventually is the leadership, which looks at the content and there is a mix of people that we work with, who also work for us – might not be on the payroll but work for us to set up this entire moderation,” Kumar told Gadgets 360.

Further, notably, Zee5 HiPi will also only allow creators of age 18 or above on its platform; however, apart from the basic age verification where platforms simply also ask a creator to mainly enter their age or date of birth, it is unclear how it plans to enforce this rule.

Certified creators


To give some distinction to creators who put in effort to frequently create new content, HiPi on ZEE5 has a model of certified creators. Kumar of Zee5 told Gadgets 360 that there were also important protocols that creators were required to follow to become a certified creator on the platform. The team always uses a popularity index on the basis of which it certifies those creators.

Once a creator mainly gains certification by the HiPi team, they are also able to access a creator's dashboard that provides insights about the content, number of likes and followers they have added as well as the comments mainly received and the advertising revenue share earned through videos.

In terms of revenue share, Kumar also added that the team decides that part on an individual basis. He, however, emphasized that apart from the revenues the platform mainly provides to certified creators, it offers the reach of nearly 8.5 crore monthly active users that are there on the Zee5 app.