KOLKATA: Streaming services have found more relevance in the post-Covid2019 period. ZEE5, one of the leading contenders in the ‘streaming war’, has brought a new head to build its subscription business when more consumers flocking to those services. ZEE5 senior vice president and business head Rahul Maroli aspires to touch the top both in terms of subscription and viewership.

“We want to be relevant to every Indian. Content has to resonate with every Indian. An extension of that became the Atrangi campaign where we are trying to say that every person is unique, that’s what this country is all about and we respect your uniqueness. In terms of our specific goal, we want to be the largest OTT platform in the country both in subscription and viewership,” Maroli says in an interaction with Indiantelevision.com.

Maroli comes with a rich experience but not within the media industry. He worked in automotive, mobility, e-commerce and consumer businesses earlier while his last assignment was with Ola. Asked about what learnings he wants to incorporate here, Maroli says that he has mostly looked after the consumer business in Ola, so the ethos remains same. 

“As long as you understand who your consumers are and how are they reacting, what is it they like, what is it you don’t like, you keep constantly going back and talking to them and trying to understand, then your ability to communicate with them, to produce good services is absolutely the same,” he adds. 

The reports and high-level data are not sufficient but the teams have to keep talking to the consumer. Talking about his other lesson, he said that working very closely with the team is very important. Hence, he would try to apply these lessons in his new role.

He adds that partnership is a very important foundation of their business. “Telcos are looking at OTTs as means of building consumer loyalty. We want to go deeper into that and build more relationships. We clearly see that where you have provided access to OTT platforms there is much more consumer loyalty,” he shares. 

Maroli further mentions that ISPs are also partners with strong propositions as they have direct access to last-mile consumers. ZEE5 has a deep partnership with ACT Broadband and the platform will roll out more partnerships in the coming days.

ZEE5, like other OTT platforms, has gained more users and subscribers during this period. Although lockdown is easing, Maroli states that it has not seen much change in the platform’s retention cohorts. According to him, the number remained the same for both direct consumers and b2b partnerships.