In 2020, streaming sites in India spent $135m to create around 1,200 hours of original content across 220 titles, according to the FICCI-EY report. Content is kingĭigital subscription revenues in India in 2020 were up by 49 percent as 28 million Indians signed up, nearly three times the 10.5 million paid subscribers the previous year, according to a report by the Federation of Indian Chambers of Commerce & Industry and Ernest & Young (FICCI-EY).Ī report by the Boston Consulting Group and the Confederation of Indian Industry found that 30 percent of viewers rated original platform-exclusive content as their most-watched genre. Even after its imminent merger with Sony Pictures Networks India, that size isn’t likely to grow much as Sony’s streaming platform has a mere 4 percent market share. This is despite Zee producing Bollywood films, and a string of highly popular long-running serials that are available in 18 languages (12 regional and six foreign) on its various channels in India and overseas as well as its streaming platform. The stakes are high for ZEE5, which has only a 9 percent share of India’s streaming market – much lower than its foreign competitors Netflix, Amazon Prime and Disney+Hotstar, which together claim 57 percent of the pie, per the RBSA report. India’s streaming market is one of the fastest growing in the world This pot of gold is attracting a lot of investment and content that’s vying for viewers and subscribers. India’s $1.5bn streaming market is one of the fastest-growing in the world and is expected to hit $4bn by 2025, according to a 2021 report by RBSA Advisors, a Mumbai-based transaction advisory firm.
It has nurtured its domestic audience for over two decades with its shrill, jingoistic prime time news and a steady diet of melodramatic daily soaps that pirouette on Hindu traditions and toxic but sacred marital bonds.īy adding a Pakistani Urdu series into the mix, Zee is hoping to make big audience strides at a crucial streaming juncture. Zee group is a major player in India’s satellite cable market with 45 news and entertainment TV channels across several regional languages. “They together represent one of the world’s largest diaspora which makes it extremely significant,” Archana Anand, the chief business officer of ZEE5 Global, told Al Jazeera, adding that the US is already driving over 40 percent of its international revenue. ZEE5 is hoping that the appeal of its prestige series, which stars some of Pakistan’s best-known actors including six actresses who play femme fatales in bloody pursuit of deceitful men, will make up for that loss by attracting audiences at home as well as in the 43 million-strong South Asian diaspora, including Pakistanis, Bangladeshis and Indians living in the United Arab Emirates and the United States.
Qatil Haseenaon Ke Naam will be available for streaming in 190 countries, except in Pakistan, where the platform is banned. It is ZEE5’s fourth Pakistani series and its most ambitious to date, created by Meenu Gaur, an Indian-British writer-director whose last outing in Pakistan, the 2013 film Zinda Bhaag, became that country’s third-ever Oscar entry. On Friday, Qatil Haseenaon Ke Naam (loosely translated as An Ode to Murderous Beauties), a seven-part noir anthology that Zee produced and shot in Pakistan, drops on ZEE5 Global, its streaming platform. Zee Entertainment Enterprises Ltd, a $944m (revenue), Mumbai-based media conglomerate, is banking on the appeal of a Pakistani drama series to grab eyeballs and a sizable chunk of the global streaming audience. Or, better still, play your favourite episode while you’re travelling to office-and make your journey through the heavy city traffic a little more tolerable.New Delhi, India -The unlikeliest of Indian media companies is doing the unthinkable. Just take a break grab a cup of coffee and quickly watch your favourite Indian serials online. We have brought everything to your desktop, so that you can watch your favourite serials online now. Many complain, “my life’s so hectic, I don’t get time to watch our favouite shows on Television anymore” or something similar. It’s our lifestyle that demands yet, we love to watch those gripping serials on Star Plus, Zee TV, Sony and Colors. These days, we spend more time with our laptops than probably with anything else. Even in India, Internet shapes the personalities of many among us-we communicate, work, play games, watch movies, listen to music, bank, do shopping and a lot more just through the Internet. Now, the Internet is no more just a medium for communication, it is much more than that-it is a fast growing culture that promises to dominate most other cultural identities. Visit DesiSerials Click Here Note: DesiSerials is now !