Zee from India relies on a Pakistani show for its success Business and Economic News

New Delhi, India -The unlikeliest of Indian media companies is doing the unthinkable.

Zee Entertainment Enterprises Ltd, a $ 944 million (revenue), Mumbai-based media conglomerate, is focusing on the appeal of a series of Pakistani dramas to catch the eyes and a large part of the global streaming listener.

On Friday, Qatil Haseenaon Ke Naam (translated as An Ode to Murderous Beauties), a seven-part black anthology that Zeek produced and filmed in Pakistan, Zee5 Global, is released on its streaming platform.

Zee5 is the fourth and most ambitious Pakistani series to date, created by Indian-British writer-director Meenu Gaur, whose latest release in Pakistan is Zinda Bhaag’s 2013 Oscar-winning third country film.

Qatil Haseenaon Ke Naam will be available for playback in 190 countries, except in Pakistan, where the platform is banned.

Zee hopes the attractions of the prestigious series starring some of Pakistan’s most famous actors, including six actors who play fatal women behind misleading men, will make up for this loss by attracting audiences at home as well. The South Asian diaspora is home to 43 million people, including Pakistanis, Bangladeshis and Indians living in the United Arab Emirates and the United States.

“They represent one of the largest diasporas in the world, which makes it very significant,” said Archana Anand, Zee5 Global’s business director, Al Jazeera, who added that the U.S. is driving more than 40 percent of international revenue.

Zee Group is a major player in the Indian satellite cable market with 45 news and entertainment television channels in several languages ​​in the region. For more than two decades she has fed her home audience with her sharp, jingoistic first-time news and a constant diet of daily melodramatic soaps that pirouette Hindu traditions and toxic but sacred marriage ties.

By adding a Pakistani Urdu series to the mix, Zee hopes to make great strides in the audience at a crucial streaming moment.

India’s $ 1.5 billion streaming market is one of the fastest growing in the world and is expected to reach $ 4 billion by 2025, according to a 2021 report from Mumbai’s transaction consulting firm RBSA Advisors.

This pot of gold viewers and subscribers are competing to attract investment and a lot of content.

The stakes are high for Zee5, which has only a 9 per cent share of India’s streaming market, much lower than its foreign competitors Netflix, Amazon Prime and Disney + Hotstar, which together claim 57 per cent of the pie, according to the RBSA report.

This is despite the fact that Zee produces Bollywood films, and in 18 languages ​​(12 regional and six foreign) are well-known long-running series available on various Indian and foreign channels and its streaming platform. Even after her instant fusion With Sony Pictures Networks India, this size is likely to grow a lot as Sony’s streaming platform has only a 4 per cent market share.

Content is king

In 2020, Indian digital subscription revenue rose 49 per cent to 28 million Indians, almost three times as many as 10.5 million paid subscribers last year, according to a report by the Indian Chambers of Commerce and Industry and the Ernest & Young Federation. FICCI-EY).

A report by Boston Consulting Group and the Indian Confederation of Industry found that 30% of viewers rated the original platform content as the most viewed genre.

By 2020, streaming sites in India have spent about $ 1,200 earning up to $ 1,200 per hour creating up to 1,200 original content per hour, according to the FICCI-EY report. This was lower than the previous year at the expense of the coronavirus pandemic. In 2021, the amount spent is expected to rise to $ 253m.

Other Indian streaming platforms, such as MX Player, are getting Pakistan-Urdu sessions, and Eros Now has a content contract with Hum TV in Pakistan and has produced a Pakistani web series. But Zee5, with its sincere original Pakistani series, has a clear edge.

Zee5 doesn’t share its subscription numbers or how much money it spends to create original shows, but in a market dominated by multinationals with deep pockets, it has to look for content that immediately attracts binge-watchers at home, but it also has a worldwide Film Network to attract an audience, including 50 per cent of the diaspora who pay to watch Indian content.

Pakistan series, similar Korean dramas, they have their own warmth and dignity. They also have a loyal audience in South Asia.

The love of Indians for Pakistani TV series dates back to the 1980s, the so-called “golden age of Pakistani television”. Mention Dhoop Kinare or Tanhaiyan even today in most living rooms on the subcontinent, and you will likely hear fairy sighs full of nostalgia.

Zeek knows this because he has taken advantage of the power of the Pakistani series to his advantage.

In 2014, it launched an Indian Zindagi chain with the Pakistani series, despite fears of blackouts occurring whenever tensions between India and Pakistan erupt.

Shailja Kejriwal (pictured) has been the creative force behind Zee’s efforts to prepare for the Pakistan shows. [File: Courtesy Zee5]

“Zindagi was born out of a belief that there are no limits to stories,” said Shailja Kejriwal, the creative force behind the channel, Al Jazeera. The immediate sensation was a show called Zindagi Gulzar Hai, which catapulted Pakistani actor Fawad Khan into a night star. “It simply came to our notice then [him] he did very well, ”Kejriwal recalled.

But two years later, in September, the Indian Army Brigade headquarters of the Jammu and Kashmir against the Indian soldiers who died in the city of 19 after an attack, he left all the shows Zindagik Pakistan. Khan-en papera arrakastatsua izateko prest zegoen Bollywoodeko film batean moztu egin zen itxura iheskor batean.

Zindagik was a struggle for survival, and the role of digital avatar assuming a time. Baina ezin izan zuen bere ospea berreskuratu eta iaz itzuli zen Zee5 Global-eko jatorrizko Pakistango edukiaren ekoizle gisa, Kejriwal sormen-zuzendari zela.

Zindagi was a channel that had domestic duties to the feelings of the government and the audience. But a streaming platform has fewer limitations.

In August last year, Zindagi premiered Pakistan’s first production of Zee5, the 10th episode of the feminist series Churails (Witches). The show was a success in Pakistan. But a month later a series clip went viral and the State Bank of Pakistan blocked any form of payment for Zee5.

In June of this year, Dhoop Ki Deewar (Returning to the Sun Wall), another Pakistani Zee5 show produced by Zindagi, caused a huge stir. A cross-border love story between a Hindu boy from India and a Muslim girl from Pakistan was challenged for many things, including questioning the theory of the two nations.

“The situation played a role in bringing things together from time to time,” Kejriwal said. “So we’re going to take a step back and then take a step forward to increase the energy! That’s the reality of Zindagi!”

Now Zindagi, who is anxious for life, has risen to the occasion.

A feminist Noir, a desi angle

Noir cinema creates a harsh moral world where dark figures hide in the dark, stray cats roam the wet streets, hooded men and silhouettes smoke cigarettes under a dark street light, and femme fatale wreaks havoc with satin dresses and bird-tailed veils that.

Zee5 is ready to release four Pakistani shows [File: Courtesy Zee5]

Today the director says he wanted to turn the black genre around, and he got the green light from Kejriwal.

“I love the genre, but it really worked for me to know that you’ve never got femme fatale except from a man’s point of view … I wanted to do a noir femme fatale, from a feminist point of view, and I wanted to do it from South Asia, from a Desi perspective,” Al Jazeera said today.

Qatil Haseenaon Ke Naam stars fatal women in saris and jhumka earrings. They smoke, abuse, drink, fall in love and die.

“I think a lot of stories need to be told if we go beyond the crowds of the goddess and the slut,” Kejriwal said. “Qatil Haseenaon is an anthology like this that celebrates Ke Naam, and it’s an ode to the ‘imperfect’ woman.”

Sarwat Gilani, a well-known Pakistani actress who plays such an imperfect woman in the series, says it was liberating to do things she didn’t do in her 20-year acting career.

“As a performer, we all rejoiced at doing things we couldn’t do on TV,” he told Al Jazeera. “You can only do that, you know, by being in a box. That completely took us out of the box. ”

Gilani recalled a scene where he had to act drunk. “I [had] Never play drunk … on screen … How do you translate that feeling and that body language and, you know, that voice on the screen? So that was very difficult for me, ”he said.

Qatil Haseenaon Ke Naam was filmed in three different cities in Pakistan but is set in a mythical space called Androon Sheher and, says Kejriwal, is a microcosm of South Asian society. “This is a space that we see all the characters live, they grow in this part of the world,” he said.

Wealthy people, a loving couple, a child prostitute, a secret cop, a gay drug lord, an honest Anglo-Asian and Hindu mother, there is a stunning but charming building with a very Indian name: Dhani Ram Mansion.

“If you go to any old city [in the subcontinent], then these are the names of the buildings… These are basically pre-partition buildings… And that is the reality, ”said Gaur.

They are designed not only to spark a longing and share of what was once a shared past, but also to connect with many tubes of the heart and keep the viewer’s eyes clouded and hooked.

Or so expects Anee from the Zee5 group, which has four more sessions in Pakistan ready to be released, to turn the Zee5 into a “platform for a real and authentic South Asian story”.