Zee5’s numbers and the state of video streaming in India

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Editor's note: In an ecosystem where most digital companies rarely talk about their actual user numbers, it is always a welcome change when someone does. Earlier in the month, media conglomerate Zee Entertainment Enterprises released its quarterly results, including the numbers for its video streaming app Zee5. This is what its December 2020 numbers looked like—a daily active user base of more than 5 million, a monthly base of about 66 million, and an average watch time per viewer per month of 133 minutes. In content, time spent is the holiest of metrics. You can give away your subscriptions for free and attract a good number of users. But time spent shows you the mirror: do people actually like your content? If they do, how much? Is your content capable of fighting off all the other streaming rivals, gaming apps, social media doom scrolling, and sleep? For advertising-led content platforms, time spent is important because ads depend on it. For subscription-led platforms, a good amount of time ensures that the churn won’t be too high. Zee5 offers both, ad-led as well as …