Zee Entertainment on global expansion drive

Essel group firm ZEEL now considering Vietnam as its next destination

Zee Entertainment Enterprise Ltd is increasing overseas presence by expanding operations in South-East Asia, Middle East and Africa to be among the top 10 global media and entertainment firms within 5-10 years.

The Essel group firm ZEEL, which forayed into Indonesia and Thailand this year, is now considering Vietnam as its next destination with a strategy of providing Hindi content dubbed or subtitled in local languages.

"We are looking to expand our international operations. In line with this, we entered into Indonesia and Thailand earlier this year. Both these regions are doing well and we are now shifting our focus to other geographies within Southeast Asia, Vietnam being next on the cards," ZEEL MD & CEO Punit Goenka told PTI.

The company has a strong presence in the West Asia and is in the process of consolidating it further.

"We are also planning to explore more countries in Africa this year," Goenka said.

The expansion in new global markets is part of the company's long term plan to be among top players in the world.

"Our aim in the next five to ten years is to be a media/ content company which is in the top 10 in the world. With this in mind, we want to go out and target mainstream in these countries and expand our footprint," he said.

Goenka further said: "As part of this strategy, we have expanded from being a primarily South-Asian content provider to entertaining audiences in the Middle East, South-East Asia and Russia, re-purposing the Hindi content by dubbing and subtitling it in the local languages along with select local productions."

ZEEL has evolved to a "content creator, aggregator and provider" from being a broadcaster, he added.

On the subscription revenue growth, he said faster growth is expected due to implementation of Phase III & IV of digitisation in India.

"In the domestic market, we expect high single digit to low double digit growth while in the international market, we expect flat to low single digit growth," he said.

According to him, ZEEL's international subscription revenue is around 11-12 per cent right now.

For 2013-14 fiscal, ZEEL had a total income of Rs 4,421.70

crore. It had an advertisement revenue of Rs 2,380.05 crore.