MUMBAI: Archana Anand deserves more credit than she is usually given. The ZEE5 Global chief business officer’s vision triggered ZEEL to evangelise the video steaming segment in India with the relaunch of DittoTV. It was a market wherein smartphones weren’t as prolific, the broadband infrastructure was shaky and the digital payment ecosystem wasn’t established as robustly as it is today. Yet, what Archana and ZEEL accomplished at the time was rather significant.

Nothing bears out this fact more than the anecdote Archana shared during her session at the recently concluded APOS 2019.

“When we had Ditto as a platform way back we had taken a very phenomenally adventurous point of pricing at Rs 20. A lot of people in the industry at that point probably thought we were insane. It worked out to be a real strategic call for us because at Rs 20 we could sit comfortably into a telco wallet. We tied up with all the telcos and tried a very interesting model where the telco decided to give it free to consumers and paid us. So we were bundling and they were marketing for us,” she said.

Among the skeptics of this model was former Hotstar CEO and now Facebook India’s vice president and managing director Ajit Mohan, widely regarded as the flag bearer of Indian OTT innovation.

“I still remember my friend Ajit Mohan asked me ‘Archana, does it really make sense?’. That’s history.  Today Netflix, Amazon, Hotstar are all in that game. It makes sense because it is a hugely synergetic and symbiotic equation,” she added.

From a ZEE5 Global perspective, though, the high point of her session was the streaming service’s announcement of its first foray into five new international languages -  Malay, Thai, Bahasa, German and Russian – taking the tally to 17.

"The opportunity for the South Asian diaspora is 400 million. 39 million out of those are Indians. But truly the content opportunity goes beyond South Asian audience,” Archana pointed out.

Following up on some of the key themes Archana highlighted at APOS 2019, here are excepts from Indiantelevision.com's interaction with her.

You have added new languages, do you have plans to bring local content in those languages or will you run dubbed content only?

It’s been six months since our launch across 190+ markets globally. During this time, we’ve really focused on addressing the need-gap for quality content that exists among south Asians across the globe by bringing them not only their favourite TV shows and a fantastic catalogue of movies, but also 60+ live streaming channels, a steady stream of fast paced, binge-able Originals, news and much more, all in the language of their choice. Today we’re well established as the go–to destination for content for South Asians anywhere, and we are number 1 across key south east Asian markets including Bangladesh and Sri Lanka.  

We’re now moving towards the next milestone – to take ZEE5 mainstream and enable even local, non-south Asian audiences across markets to access our content in their own language. The global appeal that Indian content and movies have always had is stronger today than ever before. Shah Rukh Khan has a huge fan following in Thailand and apparently, Rajnikanth’s largest fan-following is in Tokyo. Looking at these consumer trends and expectations and riding on the huge traction we’ve seen on our international language linear channels like ZEE Nung, Bioskop etc. we’ve launched our content in five new international languages Thai, Malay, Bahasa, Russian and German so that local audiences in these markets can also enjoy the best of Indian content.

This is just the start. Going forward, we will surely look at not only adding more international languages but also looking at acquisition and creation of local content.

What will be your marketing strategy to make the audience aware of your new addition?

We just unveiled the ‘Extreme Emotion’ campaign and TVC at APOS in Bali on 25 April to announce the launch of our content across five new international languages. ‘Extreme Emotion’ highlights the over the top, larger than life drama and emotional quotient of Indian content which is loved by people across the world. The campaign announcement included teaser human billboards along the route from the airport to the venue, some really interesting merchandise and more, and all this really created a lot of buzz about ZEE5. You’ll now see this campaign being rolled out across all relevant markets over the next couple of weeks. This campaign will be driven heavily on linear and digital platforms and through high-impact on-ground events in select markets. Over the next several weeks we will also be announcing our partnerships in these and other markets and you will see us going big on marketing together with our partners to promote our content.

Which international markets have you gained the most traction in?

The response to ZEE5 has been tremendous - even better than what we expected. We started seeing major hikes in viewership day by day. Within the first month of its global launch itself, ZEE5 had galloped to number one in key markets like Bangladesh and Sri Lanka. We are also witnessing huge consumer pull and traction in other key Asian markets like Singapore, Malaysia, Australia and then in the UK and Middle East. With the addition of 5 new international languages we now also address mainstream audiences, thereby significantly widening our audience base.

Content consumption trends in these markets?

Our TV shows like Kumkum Bhagya, Kundali Bhagya and evergreen library shows like the much-loved Jodhaa Akbar are hugely popular across markets like Singapore, Malaysia, UK, Middle East etc. as are our recent Original movies like Uri and Simmba and other Bollywood hits like Kedarnath, Veere Di Wedding etc.

We’re also seeing huge traction for ZEE Tamil shows especially Sembaruthi and Poove Poochoodavain in Sri Lanka, Malaysia and Singapore. Tamil content is doing exceedingly well in Malaysia; we have ZEE Tamil streaming exclusively on ZEE5, and that’s seeing a strong demand. Our recent Originals like The Final Call and Karenjit Kaur have also done hugely well in Malaysia. In markets like Bangladesh, Bengali shows like Bokul Kotha and Sa Re Ga Ma Pa - 2018 – Bangla are the top shows, along with our Original Sharate Aaj.

Noting the content consumption patterns, we have also launched language-specific packs like Tamil and Telugu packs in Sri Lanka, Bengali pack in Bangladesh etc so our audiences pay just for what they want to watch.

Could you throw more light on your partnerships in the international market?

We see building out strong telco and ecosystem partnerships as critical for our deeper entry into markets to quickly drive reach to the end consumer. For telcos also it’s a complete win-win situation. With ZEE5, they can drive up their data consumption significantly and it also gives them a single point access to a huge range of content across genres that cater to all audience segments.

We already have multiple partnerships in place across markets. We have partnered with Dialog in Sri Lanka, Celcom in Malaysia and Apigate for multiple global markets. We further have global partnerships with connected device manufacturers Netrange & Zeasn. We have many more announcements in the pipeline over the next few weeks.

You spoke about TVOD's potential during APOS. When will you launch TVOD model?

TVOD is an important part of our overall roll-out plan. We’re currently working on the plans and we will share the details as soon as they are finalised.