iWorld
‘Vilangu’ becomes the most-watched Tamil original series on Zee5
Mumbai: Zee5’s “Vilangu” has become the most-watched Tamil original series on the platform, the streamer announced on Wednesday.
Starring Vemal in the lead role, the seven-episode series is directed by Prashanth Pandiyaraj and produced by Escape Artists Madan. The series began streaming on Zee5 starting from 18 February.
The investigative drama has an IMDb rating of 8.1 that follows the protagonist Paridhi who is a sub-inspector in Vembur Police Station, Trichy. While trying to balance his personal and professional life, Paridhi is embroiled in a race against time to solve a mysterious crime. A special screening of the series was attended by the Kollywood fraternity and Tamil Nadu police, who praised the film on social media Twitter.
“We are delighted to note the success and critical acclaim received by our original web series – ‘Vilangu’,” said Zee Entertainment Enterprises Ltd chief cluster officer – South Siju Prabhakaran. “With 20+ Zee5 originals, we have been disrupting the Tamil entertainment industry and growing our dominance in the market. Zee5 has been successful in churning out creative content for its viewers while experimenting with a wide range of genres for our audiences globally. From blockbuster movies and light-hearted comedy shows to dark crime-thrillers, the wide portfolio of shows has been instrumental in the surge in viewership appealing to both older and newer audiences. The response received by ‘Vilangu’ has strengthened our commitment to continue on this journey of engaging and entertaining audiences with ground-breaking content.”
iWorld
Airtel crosses 650 million customers to cement its place as world’s second largest telco
The Indian telecoms giant, now spanning 15 countries, is chasing the top spot with satellites, smartphones and mobile money
NEW DELHI: Numbers like these do not come around often. Bharti Airtel has crossed 650 million customers, making it the world’s second largest telecom operator by mobile customer base, according to GSMA Intelligence. Only one rival sits ahead of it. The gap, Airtel intends to close.
Gopal Vittal, executive vice chairman of Bharti Airtel, was characteristically measured. “Achieving the milestone of 650 million customers to be the second largest operator globally is a great responsibility for us to serve our customers better every day,” he said. “Every customer interaction is an opportunity to earn trust and deliver value.”
The scale of the operation is striking. In India, Airtel serves over 368 million mobile customers and was the first operator to launch 5G Plus services. It now reaches over 13 million homes with high-speed internet and a further 15 million households through its Digital TV offering. Its enterprise arm, Airtel Business, runs mission-critical infrastructure across cybersecurity, cloud, IoT and SD-WAN, underpinned by over 400,000 route kilometres of subsea fibre and a string of green data centres. The company has also announced a push into non-banking financial services, using its data insights to offer personalised credit products through the Airtel app.
Africa tells an equally ambitious story. Airtel Africa serves over 179 million customers across 14 countries, with Airtel Money, its mobile financial platform, counting over 52 million users. In a continent where traditional banking remains out of reach for millions, Airtel Money is not a product. It is infrastructure.
Beyond terrestrial networks, Airtel is reaching upward. Partnerships with Eutelsat OneWeb and SpaceX give it access to a constellation of low earth orbit satellites, pushing high-speed, low-latency broadband to remote maritime, aviation and rural areas that cables will never reach.
Airtel’s networks now cover over two billion people across 15 countries. The company that began as an Indian mobile operator has become something rather larger. At 650 million customers and climbing, it is not finished yet.
