India’s Zee donates money to Pakistani show for its success | Business and Economic Affairs

New Delhi, India -Expected Indian companies are making the impossible.

Zee Entertainment Enterprises Ltd, a $ 944m (financial) company, a media company in Mumbai, is looking for Pakistani drama to capture the eyes and the wider audience of a global audience.

On Friday, Qatil Haseenaon Ke Naam (translated as An Ode to Murderous Beauties), a seven-part anthology released by Zee in Pakistan, landed on Zee5 Global, its promotional platform.

This is Pakistan’s fourth and most coveted Zee5 series to date, produced by Meenu Gaur, a British Indian writer whose final release in Pakistan, the 2013 film Zinda Bhaag, became the third Oscar in the country.

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

Zee hopes that the attraction of its iconic series, which features some of Pakistan’s best-known actors including six actresses who play femme fatales in the pursuit of deceptive men, has made up for what was lost in attracting home audiences and 43 million South Asian diaspora, including Pakistanis, Bangladeshis and India residents of the United Arab Emirates and the United States.

“They collectively represent one of the largest countries in the world that makes it so important,” Archana Anand, Zee5 Global’s chief business officer, told Al Jazeera, adding that the US already controls 40 percent of its global revenue.

Zee Group is the largest player in the Indian satellite cable market with 45 media videos and entertainment in a number of local languages. It has inspired its home audience for more than two decades with its humorous, fictional and regular soap operas that reflect Hindu traditions and dangerous but sacred family relationships.

By adding a Pakistani Urdu series to the mix, Zee hopes to improve the audience at a crucial time.

India’s $ 1.5bn market is one of the world’s largest and is expected to reach $ 4bn by 2025, according to a 2021 report by RBSA Advisors, a technology company in Mumbai.

This gold pot attracts a lot of money and things that compete with viewers and subscribers.

These threats are the highest for Zee5, which has only 9% of India’s market share – much lower than Netflix’s external rivals Netflix, Amazon Prime and Disney + Hotstar, which occupy 57 percent of the island, according to an RBSA report.

This is despite the fact that Zee is making Bollywood films, as well as a series of well-known content available in 18 languages ​​(12 episodes and six foreign) on its various movies in India and overseas as well as its advertising platform. Even later close connection with Sony Graphics Networks India, its size will not grow much as Sony’s advertising platform has only 4 percent market share.

What a king

India’s digital subscriptions in 2020 increased by 49 per cent while 28 million Indians signed up, almost three times they paid 10.5 million last year, according to a report by the Federation of Indian Chambers of Commerce & Industry by Ernest & Young (FICCI-EY).

A report by Boston Consulting Group and the Confederation of Indian Industry found that 30 percent of viewers voted for the content on the platform as their most popular type of viewer.

By 2020, India’s tourism industry has spent $ 135m to generate approximately 1,200 hours of first-of-its-kind content over 220 topics, according to a FICCI-EY report. This was lower than last year due to the coronavirus epidemic. By 2021, the amount spent would be expected to rise to $ 253m.

Other Indian platforms, such as MX Player, have been hosting Pakistani-Urdu shows, while Eros Now has a content partnership with Hum TV in Pakistan and has created a Pakistani online series. But the Zee5, with its spunky slate, originally from Pakistan, has a clear limit.

Zee5 does not share its subscription numbers, nor the amount of money it spends on making original shows, but in a market dominated by multi-player players with deep pockets, it should look at what attracts the attention of home viewers, but also has a video game that attracts people. worldwide, including 50 per cent of Indians who pay to watch Indians.

Pakistani stories, as well Korean drama, have love and respect for them. They also have loyal viewers in South Asia.

The love of the Indians for the Pakistani series dates back to the 1980s, the so-called “precious Pakistani TV generation”. Mention Dhoop Kinare or Tanhaiyan even today in many of the subcontinent’s living rooms, and you can hear the sighs of love.

Zee knows this because it has used the power of Pakistani groups to take advantage of it in the past.

In 2014, it set the stage for India, Zindagi, with a Pakistani list despite fears of closure that occur every time conflicts erupt between India and Pakistan.

Shailja Kejriwal (pictured) then launched the Zee experiment to prepare for the Pakistani demonstrations. [File: Courtesy Zee5]

“Zindagi was born out of a belief that matters are boundless,” Shailja Kejriwal, founder of the project, told Al Jazeera. The most recent event was a show called Zindagi Gulzar Hai, which made Pakistani actor Fawad Khan famous. “The audience couldn’t have been with him and all the movies he had played [him] he did very well, “recalled Kejriwal.

But two years later, in September, following an attack on the Indian Army headquarters in Ur in Jammu & Kashmir that left 19 Indian soldiers dead, Zindagi abandoned all Pakistani protests. Khan’s role in the Bollywood film that was about to be cut was cut to a temporary stature.

Zindagi, too, struggled to survive, taking on various digital roles and avatars for a while. But it never regained its glory and came back last year as the Pakistani architect of Zee5 Global, with Kejriwal as their chief producer.

Zindagi was a way to take home responsibility on the minds of the government and the audience. But the promotional platform has few such disadvantages.

In August last year, Zindagi launched Zee5 for its first production in Pakistan, a group of 10 female Churails (Witches). The demonstration took place in Pakistan. But a month later a bad video from the list spread and the State Bank of Pakistan banned all payments to Zee5.

In June this year, Dhoop Ki Deewar (translates to the Wall of Sunlight), another Pakistani show produced by Zindagi on Zee5, sparked outrage. The story of cross-border love between an Indian Hindu boy and a Pakistani Muslim girl, has been criticized on a number of issues, including doubts about the doctrine of the two countries.

“Circumstances help to keep things from happening from time to time,” Kejriwal said. “That’s why we go back and come up with double the power to move forward! It’s the truth of Zindagi!”

Now Zindagi, meaning life in Urdu, has upgraded the game.

Female noir, off desi

The Noir movie portrays a world of debauchery in which dark-skinned people hide in the dark, stray cats walk on the wet streets, men in elaborate hats and dazzling styles under a red street lamp emitting cigarette smoke, and women in satin costumes and the veils of the birds are destroyed.

Zee5 has four more Pakistani shows ready to be released [File: Courtesy Zee5]

Director Gaur says he wants to turn the noir color on his head, and get a green glow from Kejriwal.

“I love the race, but it worries me that you never knew about the femme fatale other than the way the man looks … South Asia, according to desi opinion,” Gaur told Al Jazeera.

Qatil Haseenaon Ke Naam has femme fatales in saris and jhumka earrings as his directors. They smoke, abuse, drink, love and kill.

“I believe there are a lot of issues that need to be addressed if we are to continue the ropes of the goddess and the slut,” Kejriwal said. “Qatil Haseenaon Ke Naam is one of the most celebrated songs, and it is a way for a ‘imperfect’ woman.”

Sarwat Gilani, a well-known Pakistani actress who plays an imperfect woman on the list, says it set her free to do things she had never done in 20 years.

“As an actor, we were all excited to do things we could not show on television,” he told Al Jazeera. “There’s a lot you can do, you know, to be in the box. That got us out of the box.”

Gilani remembered some of the things he had to do when he was drunk. “I [had] he was not drunk … at the window … So it was very difficult for me, ”he said.

Qatil Haseenaon Ke Naam was shot dead in three separate cities in Pakistan but was placed in a fictitious setting called Androon Sheher, who, according to Kejriwal, is a minority of South Asians. He says: “It’s a place where we all grow up in this area.

There are rich people, a loving family, a child prostitute, a secret police officer, a drug addict, a righteous Anglo-Asian woman and a beautiful but Hindu house with a very Hindu name – Dhani Ram Mansion.

“Everywhere you look today, the tide of protectionist sentiment is flowing [in the subcontinent], so these are the names of the houses … These are actually the houses of division … And they are very real, “Gaur said.

Such small details that have taken place in the past were created not only to arouse the desire for what was already there, but also to attract more hearts and cause viewers to lose sight and focus.

Or we look forward to Zee5’s Anand, who has four other Pakistani shows ready to be released on his car to make Zee5 a “real-world, real-world news destination from South Asia”.