TALKING POINT: TARUN KATIAL ON ZEE5’S TIE-UP WITH AIRTEL

ZEE5 IS UNIQUELY PLACED IN PRODUCING DIFFERENTIATED, RELEVANT CONTENT: TARUN KATIAL
Bharti Airtel and ZEE Entertainment Enterprises Ltd. has announced a strategic alliance as a part of which ZEE will make its curated Digital Originals available for Airtel’s customers across mobile and broadband, over the next three years. Tarun Katial, CEO, ZEE5 tells us what to expect out of this partnership…

ABOUT THE PARTNERSHIP: There are three parts to this deal. Firstly, we are creating a select amount of our premium content for Airtel TV consumers to be powered through Zee5 APIs on the Airtel TV app for customers registered with us. We, along with Airtel, will use the consumer understanding and data to give them click-bait content. Secondly, Airtel will bundle the Zee5 app for its high ARPU customers who will have access to our entire premium slate. Thirdly, Airtel will work with us to upsell our premium content to their customers through Airtel TV billing or through Zee5 billing.

DIFFERENTIATED CONTENT FOR DIFFERENT CONSUMERS: Airtel holds around 30% of the telecom market in India today with a large base of 3G/4G consumers. This is a great opportunity for us to partner and distribute our app and make our content available for their consumers. Video is going to be the primary driver of all data consumption. Consumers are looking for both their favourite characters in catch up TV on the Zee Network content as well as the premium content we are creating for the youth and the male audience who are looking for differentiated, relevant content in different Indian languages that we are uniquely placed in producing.

FOCUS ON REGIONAL CONTENT: We will do content in regional languages including Tamil, Telugu, Kannada, Bengali, Malayalam, Marathi and Hindi. This will be spread across original series made for digital films as well as large film releases. The series could be larger-than-life content, biopics, or something based on true life incidents with a special focus on regional content.