New digital platform ZEE5 targets regional Indian markets

IANS

Thursday, February 15, 2018

A new Indian digital platform, ZEE5, has language at its core, offering content across 12 languages -- English, Hindi, Bengali, Malayalam, Tamil, Telugu, Kannada, Marathi, Oriya, Bhojpuri, Gujarati and Punjabi.

With a mix of original, Indian and international movies and TV shows, music, live TV, and health and lifestyle content, the latest launch is by entertainment conglomerate ZEE Entertainment.

"It is both local and global,"describes Amit Goenka, CEO - ZEE International and Z5 Global.

Asked whether the focus will be on original content or acquisition, Punit Goenka, Managing Director and CEO, Zee Entertainment Enterprises Ltd, said they will aggressively use a cohesive combination of the two.

What makes the app different is that viewers can also choose their preferred display language ranging from English to Hindi to Bengali to Tamil to Gujarati.

It also offers voice search with the aim to bring entertainment into the hands of millions of Indians who are not so digitally savvy.

Viewers can search for content by simply speaking the name of a show or movie.

This positions it as an app which caters to an India without boundaries, officials said.

Archana Anand, Digital Head, ZEE5 India, said: "We see the app as filling a definite need-gap in the Indian market for strong language content and navigation experience across Indian languages.

"Our platform will be as relevant to the urban elite as it is to the new digital audiences experiencing Internet for the first time. India's digital story is going to be fuelled by new language consumers and that's exactly who ZEE5 is for."

The content download option also enables a viewer to download content from the app while on WiFi and save it to watch later without incurring data costs. In addition, the option to save this content on the memory card enables viewers to manage their phone memory.

It can be downloaded from Google Play Store and iOS app store.

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