Zee Entertainment plays on pricing with live linear TV

Four years after it launched its platform, Zee Entertainment Ltd is once again placing its bet on its live television platform dittoTV.

By offering a subscription at rock bottom pricing of ₹20 a month, Zee plans to attract masses into its live linear television with channel agnostic content from over 100 plus Hindi, English and regional channel across genres such as general entertainment, sports, movies, news and lifestyle.

“We want to offer live television at the price of a steaming hot cup of tea. Pricing will be a key to our strategy and we want to reach the masses. Our aim was to create a platform which will have content not just from our portfolio but also other content partners,” Punit Goenka, Managing Director and CEO, Zee Entertainment Enterprises, said.

Zee was among the pioneers to get into the over-the-top (OTT) and video-on-demand platform. In 2012, it had launched dittoTV.

Asked how different will dittoTV from Zee’s other OTT platform OZee, Goenka said that while dittoTV will be linear live television, OZee will continue as it OTT platform. dittoTV is a subscription-led platform where as Ozee will continue to follow a free ad-supported platform.

Goenka said that it had tied up with telecom player Idea Cellular to offer 3G and 4G internet packs a free monthly subscription with every recharge. Besides this, the company has also partnered with Siti Cable and ITZ Cash to supply recharge cards at retail channels. On whether the company is looking at original content for dittoTV, Goenka said the company will look at it only after it achieves a critical mass.

The company said it is target group is 18-35 years. “Educational institutions are free Wi-Fi zones. We see students consuming data and are a core target for us,” Archna Anand, Business Head, dittoTV, added.

As per FICCI-KPMG report, the 4G rollout, ‘Digital India’ initiative and private initiatives for broadband Wi-Fi availability at public places are likely to be a significant role for the growth of OTT services – several of which were launched in 2015. These digital infrastructure improvements, coupled with the rapid expansion of smartphone penetration, are critical to the ramp up of OTT.

The report says that at present there are concerns around bandwidth constraints, high cost of customer acquisition, dependence on advertisement-led models and high cost of data access.

“The year 2015 saw a number of OTT services being launched, and we expect this trend to continue in 2016 as well. However, this industry is yet to find a sustainable business model in India, which is likely to emerge in the next 12-24 months,” says Jehil Thakkar, Partner and Head of Media and Entertainment, KPMG.

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