Zee launches new digital platform - Zee5

Zee Entertainment Enterprises Ltd has launched its new digital platform – Zee5. Envisioned as a one-stop digital destination for Zee Entertainment, Zee5 will offer viewers a completely integrated entertainment offering with both on-demand and live TV. It comes packed with 1,00,000 hours of on-demand content, including exclusive originals, Indian and international movies and TV shows, music and health and lifestyle videos across languages.

The platform will also have an extensive live TV offering with 90+ popular live TV channels. Viewers will be able to watch content across genres in any of the 12 languages – English, Hindi, Bengali, Malayalam, Tamil, Telugu, Kannada, Marathi, Oriya, Bhojpuri, Gujarati and Punjabi.

Also, in a first for any OTT platform in India, viewers can also choose their preferred display language from among 11 languages – English, Hindi, Bengali, Malayalam, Tamil, Telugu, Kannada, Marathi, Bhojpuri, Gujarati and Punjabi.

The platform has a freemium pricing model. For now all original content, premium international and Indian content and old re-edited content will be behind a paywall. But there will also be a wide variety of shows to choose from the free content side as well.

“With the launch of Zee5, we see ourselves catapulting into the next phase of growth,” said Amit Goenka, CEO, Zee International and Z5 Global. “Digital will play a critical role in fuelling this growth and we wanted to ensure that we had a strong offering and presence in the space. As a global content company, our biggest strength is how well we understand our consumers and translate this into content they love. To us, Zee5 is the platform on which this content will be readily available to the world. Every aspect of Zee5 is based on our deep understanding of our consumers and their local ecosystem. Zee5, while phenomenally easy to use, banks on superbly sophisticated technology to create this ease. It is both local and global at the same time and we know it is going to change the way you watch content.”

Zee5 will have content from both Ditto TV (their live TV platform) and Ozee (their video streaming platform), making it possible for users to browse content from both the platforms and also additional content that Zee has acquired for Zee5.

On why they did not upgrade one of their existing platforms and why the need was felt for a new one, Archana Anand, Digital Head, Zee5 India said, “When we launched Ditto, we were ahead of the curve. We were the pioneers in OTT in India at a time when the ecosystem wasn’t evolved, bandwidth was horribly expensive and infrastructure wasn’t there. But now the infrastructure has improved, bandwidth costs have fallen, smart phone penetration has increased and for us the timing is perfect now. It was a natural process of Zee to future-proof its business and get into digital.”

The marketing strategy for Zee5 involves a 360 degree marketing push. Zee also unveiled Zee5’s brand anthem. The catchy multilingual brand anthem has been directed by Nitesh Tiwari, composed by Amit Trivedi and written by Amitabh Bhattacharya. Keeping in mind the distinct audiences, two versions of the anthem have been created – one for the North market and one for the South, each catering to the specific market nuances for authenticity and connect. BBH India has been roped in as the creative agency for Zee5 and Carat is the media agency for the platform.

The Zee5 App can be downloaded from Google Play Store and iOS App Store. It is also available at www.zee5.com, as a Progressive Web App (PWA) and on Android TVs, and Amazon Fire TV Stick. Zee5 also supports Chromecast.

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