10 Reasons Why India Fell in Love With ZEE5 in 2019

ZEE5 has content spanning diverse languages and genres.

More and more Indians are turning to OTT players to satiate their craving for original and quality content, and platforms such as ZEE5 are providing them exactly that.

The year 2019 was in many ways amazing for ZEE5 as it took significant strides in the OTT space while offering content spanning diverse languages and genres. No wonder, it has found a special place for itself in the hearts of Indians.

Here’s looking at 10 reasons why India fell in love with ZEE5 in 2019:

1. ZEE5 is easily the largest producer of original content in India across languages and genres. They have one original web series coming out in six different languages every month. ZEE5 has so far released 84+ originals in 2019, which is way ahead than all its competitors. So if you dig originals across languages and genres, ZEE5 is the place to be! Apart from originals, viewers get to enjoy different types of content in 12 languages including Hindi, English, Tamil, Telugu, Kannada, Punjabi, Bhojpuri, Bengali, Marathi, Malayalam, Gujarati and Odia.
2. The OTT platform has a fantastic curation of blockbuster Bollywood films from Uri: The Surgical Strike, Dream Girl & Simmba to Sonchiriya, Kedarnath, Padman & Veere Di Wedding and many more. So, each time viewers missed watching a movie on the big screen, you know where they found it. ZEE5 also has a great line-up of 20+ original direct-to-digital films.
3. On ZEE5, you have all your favourite stars from the world of entertainment in one place. This list includes Arjun Rampal, Dia Mirza, Kunal Kemmu, Amala Akkineni, Lakshmi Manchu, Ravi Dubey, Nia Sharma, Jimmy Sheirgill and the list goes on. Kaushik Ganguly, who is a popular name in the world of Bengali cinema, made his digital acting debut with ZEE5’s Saat Number Shanatan Sanyal. Talented Marathi actor Spruha Joshi was seen in Rangbaaz Phirse. The list of talented stars joining the platform is endless.
4. Now honestly, the content we consume depends a lot on our mood. On some days, we want to treat ourselves to a crime story or a thriller, and on some days, it’s just about edgy and light content. Well, ZEE5 has you covered. The streaming service has content across genres. Some of the major content buckets are Crime (Posham Pa, Barot House), Thriller (Kaafir, Rangbaaz), Progressive women stories (MOM, Fittrat), Edgy, young adult content (Virgin Bhaskar, Love Bites) and Experimental movies (Badnaam Gali). This ensured that India was thoroughly entertained for the whole of 2019.
5. Until 2019, the idea of a content-watching time zone was unheard of. ZEE5 created and gave India this rather unique concept. According to this, the peak binge-watching times are 6 pm to 11 pm, followed by 12 noon to 5 pm.
6. Imagine walking into a restaurant and the waiter knows what you want without you having to spell it out. Well, for a viewer, interacting with the ZEE5 platform is pretty much similar. In 2019, they implemented Customer Data Platform so as to enhance consumer experience by micro-targeting and personalisation. This means each time a user gets on to ZEE5, he is shown content basis his viewing habits and preferences. In 2020, they plan to take this to the next level by hyper-personalising user experience for any consumer that visits the platform.
7. ZEE5 emerged as India’s largest ConTech brand by investing heavily in consumer technology. This included launching recommendations and employing Dynamic multi-pathing (DMP) to better target, segment and identify different audience types, among other things. They’re closely working with Google, Microsoft and AWS on various first-of-its-kind projects and also partnering with tech disruptors. All these efforts have ensured that consumers enjoyed a seamless experience on the platform and kept coming back again and again through the year.
8. 2019 also saw the launch of the innovative ZEE5 Super Family, India’s only fictional gaming experience aimed at connecting lovers of Hindi fiction TV with one another by bringing them on one platform.
9. The year was great for ZEE5 in terms of awards and accolades as well. Among others, the OTT platform won IWM Buzz Digital Awards across categories, Economic Times Champion of Rural Markets and ET Star of the Industry Award for Brand Excellence. ZEE5 also featured in PITCH Top 50 brands.
10. ZEE5 has developed a robust distribution network by partnering with all major telcos with a view to reaching out to consumers across the length and breadth of the country. This means roughly 300 million Indians have access to 1,25,000 hours of content on the platform across genres and languages.

Peek into the future

ZEE5 is confident of continuing to break new ground in 2020 as well. Here are the top trends the platform is bullish on for the new year:

• Content in Hindi and other Indian languages will continue to be a lot more popular than English-language content.
  
• Hyper-personalisation of content is the way ahead. This will help in serving exactly the kind of content viewers want to see and in a language of their choice.
  
• Given that viewers are hungry for original content across different languages, ZEE5 will continue to invest towards the same.
  
• In the days to come, ZEE5 is bullish about content being increasingly consumed on connected devices and smart TVs, in addition to mobile devices.
  
• Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning will play a key role in content discovery and personalised recommendations. To this end, ZEE5 has collaborated with foreign tech companies that use machine learning to send personalised notifications and recommendations to viewers based on their device type, internet bandwidth, and content preferences.
  
• ZEE5 knows that deep tech and Big Data will be the major drivers of automation and productivity. They have invested in a data lake which will be the one stop for all their data-related needs. In addition to this, they also have a huge data science team that ensures that all business decisions are data-driven.
  
• In 2020, ZEE5 plans to take their ad tech solutions and gamification to the next level.

ZEE5 is clearly a pioneer in the OTT platforms space and we can’t wait to see what they have in store for the next year. You too shouldn’t be missing out on all the action. Download and subscribe to ZEE5 or log on to zee5.com.