Zee5 ramping up content play

Zee5 has lined up 111 titles, including films and web series in nine languages, in FY24 as it doubles down on the market

The initiative comes at a time when competitors like JioCinema, part of the Reliance-backed Viacom18, have been increasing their investment in content

Zee Entertainment’s over-the-top (OTT) platform Zee5 has lined up 111 titles, including films and web series in nine languages, in FY24 as it doubles down on the market, the company officials said.

The initiative comes at a time when competitors like JioCinema, part of the Reliance-backed Viacom18, have been increasing their investment in content. JioCinema recently tied up with Warner Bros Discovery to bring premium English entertainment and is collaborating with local studios to onboard local productions, films and web series. The platform has also seen its viewership grow on the back of its free streaming of the Indian Premier League and popular Hindi films such as Vikram Vedha.

The increase in the number of titles by Zee5 is over 20% higher than last year’s 80-90 titles, experts tracking the market said.

The investment in this year’s content line-up by Zee5 is also significant and estimated at over Rs 100 crore, according to market experts, as the OTT player has tied up with top production houses such as Dharma, Salman Khan Films, Guneet Monga’s Sikhya Entertainment, Applause Entertainment and The Viral Fever, among others.

“The effort is to have a wide variety of titles catering to different genres and audiences,” says Manish Kalra, chief business officer, Zee5. “Non-Hindi language content, for instance, accounted for 51% of total watch time consumed on the platform in FY23. So, we are doubling down on both Hindi as well as non-Hindi content,” he said.

Part of the line-up are Huma Qureshi-starrer Tarla, which is a film on Michelin-starred chef Tarla Dalal; a sequel to Manoj Bajpayee’s film Silence and the second season of Sunil Grover’s web series Sunflower. Punit Mishra, president, content & international markets, Zee Entertainment, says the focus is on stories that ignite the imagination, across languages.

According to the FICCI-EY media and entertainment report, the share of regional languages in the overall OTT video consumption in India will increase to 54% in 2024. This share was around 27-28% in 2020 and has been growing steadily in the last two years. In 2021 and 2022, for instance, around 47-50% of OTT originals and nearly 70% of films released on video-on-demand platforms in India were not in Hindi and English, said experts, but in regional languages such as Tamil, Telugu, Bengali and Marathi.

Karan Taurani, senior vice president, research at brokerage Elara Capital, says that OTT platforms will have to strike a balance between content investment and monetisation. For instance, JioCinema decided to go under a paywall recently for its premium English content, which will be available for an annual subscription of Rs 999, a first such initiative by the streaming platform.

Kalra says that there was a 20% growth in average revenue per user (Arpu) in FY23 for Zee5. It also clocked over 100 billion streaming minutes, he said.