Airtel and Zee Entertainment announce mega content alliance

Mumbai: In one of the largest content partnerships in the country, Bharti Airtel (“Airtel”) and ZEE Entertainment Enterprises Ltd. (“ZEEL”) on Monday announced a strategic alliance aimed at driving the growth of digital/OTT video content ecosystem in India.

Under this strategic partnership, Airtel and ZEEL will work closely to curate innovative and highly compelling digital/OTT video content solutions for customers across India. The partnership aims to bring hundreds of millions of new users onto the digital content platforms driven by rapid adoption of smart devices and wider availability of high speed data services.

Over the next three years, curated / select video content produced by ZEEL, including TV shows, original series and movies will be available exclusively on Airtel’s digital properties like Airtel TV, in addition to ZEE’s digital platform, ZEE5. This will enable Airtel’s mobile and home broadband customers to enjoy a superior and differentiated content experience.

ZEE5 App, the home of extensive digital content library of ZEEL which includes the Video on Demand (VOD) network content along with the recently launched ZEE5 Originals, Movies, TV Shows, Music Videos, Lifestyle shows, Kids shows and Plays, will be available to download through the Airtel TV app. This will add to Airtel’s existing catalogue of over 10,000 shows, movies and 375+ LIVE TV channels, giving the users an unmatched choice of content and cementing Airtel TV’s position as the one stop destination for all the content one needs. The users of Airtel will continue to enjoy ZEE’s 37 LIVE TV Channels.

By jointly pooling ZEE and Airtel’s deep knowledge of customer and content consumption preferences, both partners aim to drive proactive curation of content to offer a highly customized and differentiated experience to their customers. In particular, there will be a strong focus on curating regional content, leveraging the strong regional portfolio of ZEEL. This will also ride on ZEE5’s strategy of tailoring new content based on what customers are looking for and launching multiple original shows in six different languages every month.

Both partners will also drive joint development and marketing of innovative content solutions for the Indian market and collaborate in areas such as digital advertising.

The partnership is expected to deliver further impetus to the growing video content industry in a 360 degree manner – across artists, creators, consumers. It will also help further accelerate the consumption of video and digital first content for the current millions of users and bring onboard the next 100 million users of OTT services, largely from semi-urban and rural markets.

Gopal Vittal, MD & CEO (India & South Asia), Bharti Airtel said, “Our endeavour is to build a world-class content ecosystem by partnering all players and enable a differentiated digital entertainment experience for our customers. In Airtel TV, we have built a solid digital platform to curate top content from India and across the world and offer it to customers at one place. We are extremely pleased to announce this exclusive partnership with ZEE and look forward to collaborating with them to unlock the potential of their vast content catalogue.”

Punit Goenka, MD & CEO, ZEE Entertainment Enterprises Ltd., said, “As a Media & Entertainment powerhouse, keeping our consumers at the epicenter of our approach, we aim to be present across every platform which they wish to access and our alliance with Airtel as their lead content partner, is a firm and positive step in this direction. We look forward to this partnership, which will enable us to entertain the customers of Airtel through our thoughtfully curated content offering, leveraging our expertise in content and data. In line with our larger aim for ZEE5, to be a number one entertainment OTT player in the country, this alliance further compliments the access to our content for the overall digital consumers”.