The year approached ZEE5 global business manager Archana Anand The year 2023 is heading in a bullish mood. The South Asian broadcaster, which operates in more than 190 territories including the US and offers about 200,000 hours of content, is turning out “our best year yet, and we’re ending it on a high,” she says.

In a wide-ranging interview with Deadline, Anand explains how the biggest Indian film in memory, $$$$in propelling the service to new heights globally this year, recording a 209% year-on-year increase in consumption from January to October 2022. In the US, it has become the preferred choice of many Indians and South Asians.

Archana also reveals that South Asian content is pulling in audiences where Bollywood has not, with languages ​​like Telugu dominant among ZEE5 Global Subs in the US (20% share of domestic subs) and Australia (13%). While it was Telugu language $$$$ He clearly led the charge, and other non-Hindi surnames such as ValimaiAnd the catastrophic 2 And the fingertip You may also pay viewing.

ZEE5 launched in the US in 2021 and quickly found a niche among the local South Asian audiences there by targeting them at local grocery stores and working with student associations. Anand says that dubbing and subtitling have seen huge spikes in the US and UK among other regions.

In terms of content, ZEE5 Global has pushed West through broken newsa new version of Mike Bartlett’s BBC drama squeezing, And it’s actively creating original series outside of the US, with creators invited earlier this year. ZEE5’s sources say the status of this initiative is still “under discussion” with updates likely to follow with more to come.

Anand and her colleagues at ZEE5 hope the momentum will continue in 2023. A major change for the company looms as the merger between parent company Zee Entertainment Enterprises Limited and Culver Max Entertainment (fka Sony Pictures Networks India) nears completion. That would put the streaming device in the same list as its competitor SonyLIV, with several possible scenarios at that point.

Read on for the full interview.

Deadline: Let’s start with an impact $$$$. How did that help you ZEE5 global position?

We want people to know that there is a streaming service in South Asia with about 200,000 hours of content in 12 languages, and we have the latest movies. Last year, we had $$$$ And the Kashmir Files, which really helped us in that driving game. After being nominated for a Golden Globe, $$$$ We have a lot to extract.

Deadline: This was a huge global crossover, penetrating in a way that few Indian films have done before.

AA: This movie is the only time I’ve seen a movie that pushes mainstream people onto our platform to watch in the back of the hype. This drove us into a crazy drive, which we want to capitalize on with even more exciting plans for next year. We really want to own South Asia in a very big way.

Deadline: all the talk about $$$$ sequel It would be very exciting then, presumably.

AA: Oh yeah, sure.

Deadline: The film appears to mark a wave of interest in Indian content. You are And you see that?

AA: I’ve been saying for over a year and a half that Indian content is the next thing waiting to happen and when it does, we want to be at the forefront of making it happen. We have the greatest right to win to make this happen. I was very ambitious, seeing as ZEE5 leads the way. $$$$ It was a great motivation to push things that way.

There is a new love for Indian content, but it has also emerged in South Asian content in general. Before it was all about Bollywood but suddenly it has had to take a step back, and people are asking what the guys in the south do. Its content creates buzz around the world that Bollywood has not been able to achieve. People examine the equation to see what connects beautifully globally. Perhaps it is time for India, particularly the South, to shine.

Deadline: This is ZEE5 Global’s first full year in the US market. You seem to have located a place there but what are the challenges and what still needs to be done?

Archana Anand: When we went to the market, I was very aware that I was chasing after a group of 2-3% of the population – not even settled in one area. They are prevalent among the mainstream and in places like the Tri-State area, the Bay Area, and Texas. It is very difficult to create the brand so that only 2-3% of the population will be your consumers. If I’m marketing in India, it doesn’t make sense to take 20 panels in the most populous area and put ZEE5 as a sure shot, but I don’t get the same return on investment in the US. Where the dense population of South Asia. Putting something out in Times Square isn’t going to attract the right people – how many South Asians are going to see it?

Deadline: So how did you attract those pockets of consumers?

Getting a consumer with digital marketing as a niche player is very expensive – upwards of $80/$90 each time, so we had to think outside the box. The way we have walked now is a sense of pride and many have tried to imitate us: we have discovered where South Asia is. No matter where you live in the world, South Asians want access to South Asian stores, so we associated with Bateel Grocery stores in the US, which was our biggest win-win, and even in the UAE with Lulu supermarket. The other big attraction of South Asians in the US is the field of IT and technology. Many of them are undergraduates, so it made a lot of sense to associate with the North American Student Association of India Students to take note initiatives on the ground, one of which was a very successful college Bollywood dance competition. We had a student rate for them, and as they were away from home the need to get news and entertainment from home made our discounted rates somewhat convincing.

Deadline: How do you rate 2022 for ZEE5 Global overall?

AA: It’s been our best year yet and we’re finishing it up on a high. It’s been a three-year journey and in that time, I’ve seen how many people have stumbled along the way, confused as to what they plan to achieve. I was very clear why we set out on this journey and we struggled with everyone in the ecosystem to ensure we didn’t lose our way.

Today, the numbers show that as a streaming service in South Asia, we are in unquestionable leadership around the world. In the US, our primary market outside of India, we have leadership and that’s a dream come true. We’ve knocked all the previous people who were driving the story out there out of their way. We come from a back where the biggest and strongest players have tried and failed, and we really lived to tell the tale – the numbers are there as a guide. The overall story is deeply encouraging to us; In a global context, it has been properly accessed. What didn’t work were the things we didn’t have complete control over.

Deadline: Let’s talk about sports rights. Sports in India and among the Indian diaspora are enormous. Just look at the numbers from the IPL rights auction earlier this year – that was really eye-opening. You guys have pushed me into this space by getting the rights to the ILT20 cricket tournament. What does that represent?

AA: Whether it is India or the sub-continent in general, the thing people are most fanatical about after Bollywood is cricket. We know the value you bring in terms of bringing people to the screen – cricketers are the biggest heroes after Bollywood stars. Having said that, some of these rights have crazy price tags attached to them, so it’s always a very tactical decision about what to spend versus how you want to move forward. We put all our strength into it, but how much we spend and how much we want to win will be taken on a case by case basis. ITL20 is the first of many you’ll see.

Deadline: It’s been nearly two years since regulation of Indian broadcasting emerged, with many worried about how censorship will increase. How has regulation affected what you do?

AA: When we were arguing and drafting the document around what we wanted as a regulatory way going forward, we were fighting hard about self-regulation, saying that was the fundamental difference with traditional television. We were clear that we do not shy away from our responsibility and that we can easily refer to the categories of “absolute nos”, from an ethical point of view. But we’ve equally struggled to say that creativity in its truest form requires certain creative liberties and we don’t like that being curtailed under the guise of larger blanket regulations. We think this would remove the essence of how streaming platforms work.

Going back to the global side, we’ve decided to go with the regulations for each locality. For example, when we were working in Bangladesh, I was very aware that it is a country with stricter laws. It was the same in Pakistan and the Middle East. We understand that whether it’s a religious or cultural passion, it’s true to what they believe in and you have to stick to it.

Deadline: The question of how banner advertising works in local areas is really explosive around the world. It has become the great debate in Europe, where the question of how much to reinvest is the bigger debate than to show. You’ve talked about investing domestically in the US which is something you’ve done elsewhere.

AA: It’s fair to expect investment to flow into the local markets and that’s exactly how we operate in Bangladesh, for example. We’ve been very committed to going local and have done some excellent work creating local content for this market with local content creators. We understand [the fear around overseas players coming in]. In India in 1994, when globalization took place, there was an initial fear that big brands like KFC and Coca-Cola would come up – would they take our jobs? pollute our water? It takes conversation and time to prove that you will win the internet. Wherever we go, we will give as much as we get.

Deadline: One last question about original content. Can you point out which shows and movies have really worked for you and where were the challenges?

AA: We have a really fun series called tripled And a great spy movie Informer: A Spy Story, in a very specific context that would peak the interest of any South Asian as it does for India and Pakistan; A well crafted spy story with great production values. But we struggled more on the global side on the back of the originals rather than the movies. I don’t have the liberty of doing surround marketing like I do in India. I can use word of mouth to make it work – I can ride that way a little late on something that’s already popular in India. Otherwise, movies work better. The hype around movies is universal and marketing is done for me. The originals are doing well in the global market but I can’t build up the hype the same way.