Any anniversary merits a celebration befitting the occasion, and Zee5 seems to have given its users exactly that.
To mark the OTT platform’s three-year anniversary, Zee5 has slashed its annual subscription plans by 50% in a bid to entice users and give them an opportune excuse to join the Zee5 bandwagon.
With the price drop, interested users would be able to avail of the Zee5 Premium yearly plan for as low as Rs 499. A limited-period offer, the half-off scheme is only slated to remain valid until the end of February. After that, the Zee5 annual premium plan will revert to the original price slab of Rs 999.
Once users lock-in with the annual subscription membership, they will be able to access all Zee5 originals and exclusive shows. That being said, the price of one-month and three-month Zee5 Premium plans will continue unchanged at the old prices. At the moment, the 30-day plan is charged at Rs 99, while the 3-month subscription for Zee5 Premium is priced at Rs 299.
Other graces of the annual subscription plan will see the users gorge on ALT Balaji Shows, Zindagi TV Shows, Kids, Live TV, and TV shows before they are even telecast on TV. In addition, another huge bonus is the fact the Zee5 Premium members get to watch videos on five different devices at a time, which has proven to be a magnetic feature.
Looking across the fence at the rivals, Amazon offers its Prime subscription at a starting price of Rs 129 in their monthly plan. Accessible on Amazon Fire Stick, Smart TVs, Android TV, and Apple TV, and Android and iOS devices, the annual subscription plan of Amazon Prime is also evenly priced at Rs 999. Prime users are lured due to the added benefits of shopping from Amazon India.
Another major player, Netflix’s mobile-only base plan, begins at the price range of Rs 199. The basic plan on the other hand, which lets users watch content on only one nominated screen at a time, begins in the Rs 499 slot in Standard Definition. It is Netflix’s premium plan that, at Rs 799, supports four screens at a time. The torn on Netflix’s side is that all the Netflix plans come with mere 30 days of validity.
The closest that gets to Zee5’s pricing layers is Disney+Hotstar, which currently offers two plans – The VIP Hotstar plan, which can be purchased at Rs 499 for a year, and the Premium plan, pinching the pocket by Rs 1,499 per year.
Anniversary being the perfect juncture, this move is also Zee5’s stratagem to capitalize on its fine form, which saw it record viewership of 437.4 million starting from March 2020 to April 2020, strengthening its position as India’s 2nd largest OTT platform with advertising video-on-demand.
Another stat that works in the platform’s favour is that most Indian viewers prefer watching regional language content, especially in Hindi, on the OTT platforms. This, evidenced by how Hindi language content accounted for >50% of the overall streaming in April–July 2020, gives Zee5 all the more reason to enrapture users with new price offerings, especially in a price-sensitive nation such as India.
According to a report, the Indian OTT market is set to scale a mammoth Rs 237.86 billion by 2025, from the Rs 42.50 billion it was earlier in 2019.
Going by the numbers, India is expected to play host to 500+ million online video subscribers by 2023, the number only spiralling upwards with increased smartphone and internet penetration. Going by the current trends, a diversified content portfolio with flavourful pricing plans is in the OTT players’ best interests to maintain a healthy number of paid subscribers.
From Zee5’s perspective, viewership on the platform rocketing by 200% on the back of the pandemic,  coupled with a 45% rise in its paid viewers, leading to a whopping 54.7 million MAUs as of September 2020 has seen ZEE5 branch out to introduce other short-video, gaming, and engaging educational content.
Another report released earlier this year by Sensor Tower indicated that ZEE5 climbed to be the sixth-most downloaded app on Google Play Store among streaming platforms.
With Zee5 on the charge, its slash on the annual subscription plans will surely see a string of new users flocking to the platform in search of the desi tadka.
Stay tuned for more updates.
