MUMBAI: ZEEL has announced a strategic restructuring of the organization in line with its ‘ZEE 4.0 Strategy’. As part of the restructure, the company has brought in Rahul Johri as president – business, South Asia. He will be responsible for leading the integrated revenue and monetization team.
In other key shuffles in the top leadership, ZEE has elevated CEO (broadcast) Punit Misra to president - content & international markets, while Amit Goenka will take over as the president - digital businesses & platforms. These changes are effective immediately.
Tarun Katial, who is leading ZEE5 India business, will continue to report to Amit Goenka. Shariq Patel will be responsible for the integrated movies business and Anurag Bedi will continue to drive the music business. All of them will report to ZEEL MD & CEO Punit Goenka.
Under ‘ZEE 4.0 Strategy’, the company will integrate all of its digital assets under a single umbrella, which includes ZEE5 (Domestic AVOD+SVOD), ZEE5 Global, SugarBox and Digital Publishing.
In this new version of the company, its focus will be on reinventing the existing business models, maximizing its core, expanding into adjacent spaces and exploring new areas of business. To this end, it has announced the following strategic steps:
• Aggregating content creation: Creating extraordinary entertainment content has always
been the key area of focus for the Company. In order to build viewer stickiness, the company has been sharply focusing on enhancing viewer intimacy, capturing & embedding sociocultural insights and the finer nuances of the local languages & customs in its content creation process. Customer centricity has been the key to the Company’s success in delivering rich, meaningful and engaging content. A ‘content first, cluster centric’ framework, is enabling ZEE to take the content creation process, closer to its viewers. This approach aims at leveraging the company’s strengths in regional clusters, improving content production efficiencies, enhancing consumer insights and most above, delivering better and more cost-effective content across platforms. Hence the company has formed an integrated content team, responsible of creating and serving content to its viewers across linear & digital platforms.
• Streamlining International Business: The Company has been entertaining viewers in over 190 countries across five clusters viz. APAC; MENA; Africa; Europe and North America. With its rich experience garnered across the globe, the Company has developed a deep level of understanding of each market. The linear (Advt./Distribution) and digital (AVOD/SVOD) teams in the international markets will be integrated into a single team, led by the market revenue leader who will be responsible for maximizing the revenues across all formats (Linear/Digital) and revenue streams. The integration will also enable each international cluster leader to craft a local-market aligned approach. With this integrated approach, the Company aims to maximize revenue and drive content monetization, by optimally capitalizing the opportunities presented in the international markets.
• Integrating digital assets: The company has been substantively investing in building its digital ecosystem, given its strategic importance for future growth. While TV continues to grow in the country, digital viewership is growing at a frenetic pace, with large number of viewers adding digital to their existing formats of content consumption. In order to drive greater synergies across technology, data and talent, which are the three critical determinants of success in the digital ecosystem, the company will be bringing together all of its digital assets under a single umbrella, which includes ZEE5 (Domestic AVOD+SVOD), ZEE5 Global, SugarBox and Digital Publishing.
• Movies Business: The Company will be combining the different parts of its movies business which are currently embedded in multiple domains, into a single integrated platform. This team will be responsible for both aspects of the value chain - movie purchase/production as well as monetization, across all markets (Domestic & International). Driving better line of sight through an integrated approach, this revised framework will substantially enhance the effectiveness of the company’s movies business.
• Music Business: The company’s music business has gained substantial traction and it will continue to invest and grow this business to achieve market leadership.
• Integrated revenue & monetization team: The company will be creating an integrated revenue and monetization team, combining all the existing B2B revenue generating teams (linear advertisement, sales, digital advertisement sales, distribution and B2B SVOD Partnerships) into a unified ecosystem. With this revised framework, the Company aims to drive a more synergized monetization engine that will deliver enhanced solutions to its clients, improve wallet monetization, extend coverage to small and medium enterprises (SMEs) and increase subscriber penetration across linear and digital formats.
“ZEE 4.0 will be an integrated and synergise organization, with a sharp focus on delivering world class entertainment content to our consumers across the world and enhanced value to our partners across the ecosystem,” said ZEEL MD & CEO Punit Goenka in a press release.
“I am most certain that the collective experience and expertise of the leadership team will help us immensely in achieving our set goals for the future and realize the vision chalked out for the all new version of ZEE,” he added.
