India’s Zee preps German launch

MIPTV: India’s Zee Entertainment Enterprises (ZEE) is preparing to launch a new channel in Germany this July.

Free-to-air entertainment channel Zee One will target a core audience of women aged 19 to 59 with premium Indian films and series. Its content strategy also includes a move into in-house entertainment and general interest programmes.

German TV and digital media exec Friederike Behrends will oversee the channel and business operations in the German-speaking area.

Zee TV CEO for Europe Neeraj Dhingra said the launch represented a “major step” in its international expansion strategy and that Zee One was launching into “one of the world’s most important television markets, in which the Bollywood genre is still barely represented as yet.”

ZEE’s portfolio includes 34 Indian and 37 international TV channels, plus eight HD stations, reaching 960 million people in 169 countries. It also operates OTT platforms Ditto TV and india.com. Additionally, the group owns the largest Hindi film library worldwide, amounting to 210,000 hours of programming and 3,500-plus movies.