ZEE5 plans to triple investment in Tamil, Telugu content in 2022

ZEE5 plans to almost triple its investment in Tamil and Telugu content, which contribute 20 per cent each to the OTT player's viewership, in 2022 as compared to the previous year, its Chief Business Officer Manish Kalra told Business Today in Chennai on Tuesday. 

OTT players have been increasingly focusing on regional language content to tap into non-Hindi speaking audiences in smaller cities and towns to grow their user base, as top-tier cities are seeing saturation. The entertainment-hungry southern region with four thriving film industries has especially drawn a lot of interest from the streaming platforms. 

ZEE5, the OTT player owned by the listed TV network Zee Entertainment Enterprises Limited, sees 50 per cent of its overall viewership coming from regional languages -- 20 per cent each from Tamil and Telugu, and 10 per cent from other non-Hindi languages, Kalra said ahead of ZEE5 announcing its Tamil content slate for the rest of 2022, which includes 10 original series. 

"And even two years ago, the number for non-Hindi viewership on ZEE5 was very small," ZEEL President (Content & International Markets) Punit Misra told Business Today. 

Kalra said, "If the rest of the country is growing at 100 per cent in terms of paid subscriptions, Tamil and Telugu are growing at 150 per cent. It is also growing much faster than Hindi...That's why it gives us the confidence that the market has the appetite to consume content and that they are willing to subscribe for the content." 

ZEE5 had 6.1 million daily active users as of March 2021, according to its latest available annual report. Media consultancy firm Ormax estimates it had 6.5 million active paid subscribers as of August 2021, pegging it at the third spot after Disney+ Hotstar with 34.5 million and Amazon Prime Video at 19.7 million. 

Also Read: MakeMyTrip's fintech arm acquires majority stake in BookMyForex

"While India has several languages, the cluster of Tamil and Telugu is very big and we want to double down, triple down on our investments here. That's 2x-3x investment in Tamil and Telugu because we are producing original shows here. Not many OTTs produce original shows for Tamil and Telugu," said Kalra. 

The ZEE5 management is also confident about the significant growth opportunity for OTT players in India, despite theatres opening up and drawing crowds for some big-ticket films such as RRR, The Kashmir Files and Gangubai Kathiawadi.  

"The theatre business is really the heart of what drives movies. But even earlier, the economics of movies was not only driven by theatres. Even in the pre-direct-to-digital world, it was a driven a lot by TV rights and music rights," said Misra. 

Kalra added that the company expects OTT penetration in India to go up to 30-35 per cent over the next 3-4 years from the roughly 16 per cent currently. 

India has 70-80 crore smartphone users. There are 9.6 crore paid OTT subscriptions in India across 4.07 crore paying audiences, according to data from Ormax Media. That works out to 2.4 subscriptions per paying audience member. 

"All films will find a way to OTTs, either directly or after a theatrical release. Will direct-to-OTT films reduce? Yes. But it will not slow down OTTs because we are parallelly investing in originals much higher than what we did last year," said Kalra. 

He said ZEE5 had three originals in Tamil last year, while this year the platform is planning to launch 12-15 Tamil originals and 8-10 movie premieres after theatrical releases. 

Also Read: Indian streaming industry likely to grow $13-15 bn over the next decade