The mood was rather pepped up at the presser of Zee network’s ambitious OTT launch… christened Zee5.
Catchy in name with a sense of candor, the intent is to lure the young audience, who are busy hobnobbing on the web, consuming volumes of content on the go.
The OTT space has seen a sudden mushrooming in the country. Suddenly, we hear more content coups on the web space rather than the traditional TV medium. The Saifs and the Madhavans of the world, who are wary to enact on the tube, are glad & glee to sign a web project. Web is the new cool, you see.
Zee, with its Ozee and Ditto did tip-toe in the space way early than its immediate competitors, however, somehow lost the plot on the way. A media conglomerate, it rapidly picked up its scattered pieces and put its hat back in the ‘digital’ ring with the launch of Zee5.
At the launch, the Goenka brothers, Amit and Punit, laid out their ambitious plans. Boss lady Archana Anand’s passionate vocalizations reaffirmed the belief that the Zee5 push will be sustained, and not get subdued over time.
Zee5 is said to be Amit Goenka’s pet project, dear to his heart. He seemed quite a tech savvy displaying all the cool features in the app. Zee5 will have all Zee network content (GECs, news et al) and also originals. It promises to dole out new original shows every month.
The app’s interface looks seamless and easy to navigate. The voice command search tool (though not new in terms of idea) is a smart integration. Having said that, what really seems evident is Zee5’s regional push, with content availability in as many as 12 regional languages. And guess what? Zee5 also aims to push the regional web originals envelope, which is indeed laudable.
The theme ‘feel’ song is peppy and exudes energy and vibrancy. The multilingual lyrics capture Zee5’s ‘holistic’ essence.
When a scribe asked Punit on being late bloomers in the otherwise already cluttered ‘OTT’ market, the master businessman assured that Zee5’s growth pace would be fast and ‘everything that is needed to be done will be done,’ to ensure major market share.
With an interesting line up of originals (featuring popular names like Swara Bhaskar, Sunny Leone, Baadshah among others), and a whole lot of GEC content, movies and music…the app has entertainment value galore.
Some of the interesting features of Zee5 are:
In addition to Android and IOS users, ZEE5 will be available across Amazon Fire TV Stick, Chromecast and also on www.zee5.com
ZEE5 will present a huge lineup of originals, Indian and International TV shows and movies, LIVE TV and content on Health and Lifestyle
Viewers can watch content in 12 languages. They can choose from English, Hindi, Gujarati, Marathi, Bengali, Malayalam, Tamil, Telugu, Kannada, Bhojpuri, Oriya and Punjabi
There’s also a voice search option using which the viewers can search and find the movies, shows etc of their choice easily (as mentioned above)
Users will also get the option to save the content on their phones in their external memory card. This can be done over wifi, to save consumption of mobile data
All said and done, we hope that Zee5 would truly home some interesting originals and not merely rely on its network library or content acquisition. After all, as the wise man has said, ‘variety is the spice of life.’