Where you see the business in the next few years: At least for the foreseeable future, Zee5 will be the biggest bet for Zee. We do expect that the business will turn around and become EPS-accretive towards the fifth-year mark. We are just about six months into the launch. We have already become the number two OTT player in the country. In the next 12 months I expect to emerge as the number one OTT player. This is only about India. We have soft launched the business in the international markets on 2 October, which was our 26th anniversary. We hope to take it to about 190 countries in the next one year.

How much are you investing in this business?   A large part of our excess Ebitda (earnings before interest, tax, depreciation and amortization)—over 30% is going behind this business. As I have stated earlier, I can very comfortably deliver more than 36% Ebitda margin, if I was not investing in Zee5, but I am going to invest a large part of that 600 bps behind it.

On OTT platform, core television business & advertising revenues: For the short-term, when I say short-term, I am talking about a three-five-year horizon; I expect it to be a TV and digital play. Given that our country is still about 95%-plus single TV households, it is the secondary audiences, which are moving to the OTT platform.  By our own numbers, the core audiences are around the age bracket of 18-35. So, I expect both to co-exist in the foreseeable future. Some categories of advertisers will shift sooner than others.

I don’t expect fast moving consumer goods (FMCG), which is the core of television network, to shift any significant money out of television anytime soon. Anybody who wants to build a brand needs television. Digital offers itself as a very effective transactional media.

On subscriptions going forward:  If you look at just domestic subscription, it is as high as 26%. I expect that the subscription numbers will grow much faster. We are yet to see enough take up in the OTT platform subscription numbers. This is all coming on the back of the television right now. In Q4 of this year, I will release numbers on the subscription side of the business as well.

On digital advertising & competition: Our competition will still remain mainstay with the local players given the breadth of the language content that we want to be working with. We have the freemium model, which is a free AVoD (advertising video-on-demand) service, as well as a subscription-based video on demand (SVOD) service. Most international players are purely an SVOD service in this country. So, these will be the differentiators for us. We were the first one and only OTT player that launched its UI/UX in 12 languages. We were the first OTT player to launch voice search, given that literacy levels, or even the simple typing efforts in our country, are pretty low. So as far as I am concerned, I am looking at the middle India and I am going to be an OTT player for the masses if you can call it that.

Ad revenues , driven by regional play : As of now, consumption is still happening a lot in Hindi in terms of advertising. I think we are to still show the proposition of digital, regional language to the advertisers for them to significantly start advertising there as well.

Will we see disproportionately higher investment in the film business given that Zee5 is the big bet? I look at the film business as not just the production business. I look at the film business even as an acquisition business. From our perspective, if you look at the last two years, we have definitely upped our game in the film business. We invested disproportionately in the last two years and that is what some of the questions I keep getting on my inventories and advances that have gone up. That is all largely towards the film business itself and we will continue to invest in it.

Aspirations going forward: Our aspiration will always remain to beat the market, whether it be on advertising or subscription, or now even the OTT business. Our aspiration is always to be, if the market is growing at 12%, how can I grow at 1.5 times of that. So, you can do the math better than I can. There is no reason why we should not be hitting the Rs 10,000-crore mark in the next three years.