India’s Zee Entertainment celebrates its 30th anniversary this year, facing what some say is its biggest challenge yet – merging with Sony Pictures Networks. At the same time, the company is pushing the boundaries on content creation, global co-productions & streaming service Zee5. Vanita Kohli-Khandekar & Janine Stein capture a birthday moment.

Punit Goenka is walking a tightrope. Zee Entertainment Enterprises, the company he heads, is in the process of merging with Sony Pictures Entertainment Inc’s India subsidiary, Sony Pictures Networks.

By April 2023 when all regulatory clearances are through, Goenka will lead the US$1.8-billion venture – India’s second largest media company after Meta. Currently, Zee has US$999 million in revenue and Sony has US$837 million in India. 

How Goenka, a minority shareholder and son of Zee founder, the legendary Subhash Chandra, handles the people-shedding, the culture wars and the decisions he makes on brands to keep or kill, will be among the toughest things he has done.  

Zee has just under a fifth of TV viewership in India with 49 local channels. According to Broadcast Audience Research Council (Barc)data for full-year 2021, the merged company will have a 27% market share, putting it firmly ahead of current leader, Disney-Star. 

Unlike Sony, Zee has a strong presence across Hindi, Marathi, Tamil, Telugu, and other Indian languages. It also has a global footprint with 35 channels in 170 countries. It lacks sports and kids programming, which Sony and its 27 channels have, along with a strong urban connect. Both companies have strong film businesses and their own streaming/OTT platforms. 

On the back of premium drama series such as "Scam 1992" (Applause Entertainment), "Rocket Boys" (Roy-Kapur Films) and "Maharani" (Kangra Talkies), SonyLIV is now India’s second largest SVOD brand after Disney+ Hotstar. 

Zee’s global steaming platform, Zee5, is beginning to draw attention thanks to the buzz around shows such as "The Broken News", an adaptation of BBC Studios’ scripted drama, "Press", about the rivalry between two news organisations, and three seasons of "TVF Tripling" (TVF), the story of three siblings on a hilarious journey to find themselves and their relations. 

These followed the nine-episode "Duranga – Two Shades of a Lie" (August 2022), the Indian adaptation of 2020 Korean drama, "Flower of Evil", directed by Pradeeep Sarkar and Aijaz Khan, and produced by Rose Audio Visuals. The series is about Sammit Patel (played by Gulshan Devaiah) who appears to be the perfect father and husband. When his detective wife, Drashti Dhami, investigates a series of gory murders, the findings threaten to destroy her family.

Zee5, which launched in the U.S. in June 2021 with more than 130,000 hours of Indian, Pakistani and Bangladeshi entertainment in 18 languages, has proved to be remarkably brave about the topics it tackles in the shows it backs, pushing boundaries on, among other issues, women, safe sex and political conflict. 

In June last year, Zee5 premiered Pakistani original, "Dhoop Ki Deewar", from Motion Content Group/Hamdan Films. The18-episode series, presented under Zee’s Zindagi Original label, was billed as a story of “heart over hate” set against a backdrop of the Indo-Pakistan conflict. Director Haseeb Hasan described the show as “a reflection of positivity beyond borders, religion and societal biases… and has an underlying message of peace, harmony and joy of life”.

"Dhoop Ki Deewar" followed writer, creator and director Asim Abbasi’s Churails ("Witches"), a thriller about four women in Pakistan who form a detective agency to find cheating husbands and find themselves embroiled in a conspiracy. The series is bold, the women are fierce and fearless, and the whole series entertains as well as raises a fist against toxic masculinity.

In July this year, director Jai Basantu Singh’s comedy feature, "Janhit Mein Jaari", added a layer of social commentary about safe sex to the burgeoning slate. 

In presenting Zee5’s slate, Archana Anand, Zee5 Global’s chief business officer, has talked about using humour and sensitivity to address taboo subjects, and about stories that “have the power to engage deeply and go well beyond the South Asian audience”.

The latest original, Aanand L. Rai’s "Raksha Bandhan", continues rapid-fire content rollouts as the platform woos international audiences, particularly in the U.S. Produced by Zee Studios, Cape of Good Films and Colour Yellow Productions, "Raksha Bandhan" is about an oldest son and only brother of four sisters who promises his mother on her deathbed that he will marry off his sisters before getting married himself.

In the first quarter of 2022, Zee5 released 64 new TV shows and movies (including 13 originals). In May, the company said it would end the year with 40 original shows plus 40 movies for a total of 80 new titles across Hindi and regional languages and multiple genres.

Zee has also stepped up global content creation via international co-production and development arm, Zee Plus, under veteran Zee exec, Zee Plus chief business officer, Sunita Uchil. The most recent co-pro, announced during the Mipcom market in Cannes in October this year, is The Lion’s Last Roar, with U.K.-based natural history/science docs producer, Talesmith. The 2x60-mins 4K conservation series releases globally in March 2023. Zee Plus and Talesmith previously partnered on "Life of Earth: From Space" and "Life of Earth: The Age of Humans", an ambitious series for Zee Entertainment and Smithsonian Networks.

Zee’s burgeoning global credits also include lifestyle/culinary travelogue, "The Spice Trails: Latin America", which has pre-sold to Australia’s SBS Food for the channel’s 2023 schedule. The 12-episode half-hour 4K UHD show – the first co-production between India (Zee) and Mexico (TelevisaUnivision) – features Mexico, Guatemala, Panama, Colombia, Ecuador, Peru, Chile and Argentina. Other versions covering Asia, the Middle East and Africa are in the works.  

There is poetic symmetry to Zee’s latest ambitions. Launched 30 years ago, Zee was one of the progenitors of private broadcasting in India. 

Goenka’s father, Subhash Chandra, set up the firm against all odds. Zee’s merger with Sony in many ways reflects the same reality that Fox’s sale to Disney in 2017 did – a way of safeguarding the brand and ensuring its survival in a future that will be dominated by large-scale tech competitors such as Meta, Google, Amazon Prime Video or Netflix. 

“As Zee and the industry move towards the next 30 years, we will continue to take pioneering steps to create a robust version of the company, while also redefining the future of the media and entertainment landscape in India,” Goenka said in an emailed comment. The regulatory processes around the merger mean he is not currently free to talk directly to the press. 

“Zee’s journey over the years can be defined by its sharp growth, its risk-taking ability to constantly tap into newer avenues and its consistent vision to generate higher value for all stakeholders,” Goenka says. 

True that. “Zee was among the first broadcasters to attempt multiple languages,” points out Shailesh Kapoor, CEO, Ormax Media, a Mumbai-based consulting and research firm. Its Marathi-language channels have dominated the genre for decades. 

“In general entertainment channels, IP creation is difficult. But Zee has done well with "Sa Re Ga Ma Pa" and "Dance India Dance",” Kapoor adds. Both are original Indian non-fiction formats created in-house. "Sa Re Ga Ma Pa", a music reality show, has completed 33 seasons while "Dance Indian Dance" has aired for seven seasons so far. 

Zee has also just taken another stab at sports with a strategic licensing agreement with Disney Star in August this year. Disney Star will license the television broadcasting rights of the International Cricket Council’s (ICC) Men’s and Under 19 global events from 2024 to 2027 to Zee. These are the building blocks for any regular broadcasting company. 

Among the many questions that will be answered in 2023 is: Will SonyLIV stay or will Zee5? Will Zee TV remain or Sony flagship general entertainment channel, Sony Entertainment Television (SET)? What about headcount? 

Those are the tough questions Goenka will be grappling as Zee navigates its 31st year. That may not be such a party.

▶ In the beginning... 

In 1991, like many Indians, serial entrepreneur Subhash Chandra saw CNN, the first satellite channel to broadcast into India. What he saw was not just the Gulf War that CNN was broadcasting, but the potential for satellite TV.

He began a conversation with David Manion, president of the newly launched Star TV to lease a transponder on AsiaSat-1 – the only satellite at the time with a footprint across 38 countries, including India. AsiaSat-1 was owned by a consortium that included Hong Kong-based billionaire, Li Ka Shing. Li’s son Richard had launched Star TV from AsiaSat-1. 

The trickle of channels – CNN, Star Plus and others – would become a flood, given how under-penetrated the Indian media market was at the time.

Chandra wanted to get in before anybody else. He and Zee co-founder, Ashok Kurien, worked out a business plan for a 50:50 joint venture and assumed a transponder lease cost of US$1.2 million a year, a figure Star’s Manion had quoted. 

In December 1991, they flew to Hong Kong. The meeting with Richard Li was a disaster. Li did not believe there was any money to be made in India and refused to do a joint venture. Li, who has never discussed the Zee deal in any interview, also refused to lease the transponder for less than US$5 million a year – more than four times the previously agreed price. A furious Chandra threw caution to the wind and agreed to pay US$5 million. 

Li did not give in. It took him a trip to India and a refusal from every media baron he met – Vineet Jain, Sanjay Dalmia and Nusli Wadia, among others – to realise that only Chandra had the gumption and cussedness to pay that kind of money. Only Chandra believed that satellite broadcasting had a future that would enable him to recover that sum.  

In May 1992, Chandra signed a letter of intent with Li. In October the same year, he launched Zee TV. 

(Excerpted with permission from “The Making of Star India”, Vanita Kohli-Khandekar, Penguin-Random House)
 

This feature appears in ContentAsia's December 2022 print magazine