iWorld
ZEE5 India bolsters product & tech team through key appointments
MUMBAI: ZEE5, today announced key appointments in their product and technology team. As part of the strategy to further drive the next stage of growth and innovation, ZEE5 has onboarded Anjul Sachan as Adtech chief architect, Manit Kathuria as user experience head, Prateek Pant as video engineering head and Mandar Deodhar as technology (payments) director.
Sachan, a graduate from IIT Bombay, will be leading the AdTech architects team at ZEE5. He will be responsible for the R&D as well as technical execution of all AdTech projects including adserver, self-serve, and optimization engine among others. He brings with him a rich experience in building and managing ad recommendations, content feed personalization, and a self-service portal for advertisers and publishers. In his previous avatar, Anjul has led AdTech growth strategies and product roadmap for Times Internet Limited Adtech division, while working on some solutions for ad platforms, data forecasting, audience data management, ad-blocker, ad-fraud identification, and so on.
Kathuria brings over 14 years of design experience with him. In his new role, he will lead the CX experience from a product perspective. His key focus involves solving consumer problems across platforms effectively and quickly; building a seamless experience for both AVOD and SVOD users. He will lead the product design team to achieve these goals at ZEE5. An alumnus of the University of Washington in Seattle, he has also been instrumental in building companies such as Rooja.com, Exclusively.com and Prophesee during his early days in the fashion and SAAS space. He has formerly worked as design and UX head of for companies like Snapdeal, Fabhotels among others. Before joining ZEE5, he was a part of Magicbricks as user experience head
Pant, with an experience of over 18 years in technical leadership experience in video technologies has led the design and development of several multimedia CE products and OTT platforms. In his new role at ZEE5, he will be handling end to end video engineering from transcoding, encoding, CDN, and all player playability across platforms and will also be focussed on video pipelines for meta generation. He is passionate about IoT, video inferencing using AI/ML, AR/VR and cloud computing. Prior to this, he has worked with leading firms like Astro, Technicolor, Cisco, Maxim Integrated, Samsung Electronics, and DRDO.
Deodhar joins as technology director. He will be responsible for end to end technology requirements for subscription, payments, and all third-party integrations. Mandar is an IIT Bombay alumni from MTech 2005 batch and has worked in different companies like Indiagames, Disney, Citrus Payments, Hotstar and HERE Maps
iWorld
Banijay Asia’s The 50 tops OTT charts with 8.1 million JioHotstar views
Reality competition becomes most watched show on JioHotstar in debut week.
MUMBAI: Fifty contestants walked into a palace, but millions of viewers showed up for the drama. Reality competition The 50, produced by Banijay Asia, has emerged as the most watched show on JioHotstar, clocking 8.1 million views in its debut week. The figure, reported by Ormax Media, places the show at the top of the OTT viewership charts and marks a strong opening for the digital reality format.
Adapted from a popular French format, The 50 brings together 50 personalities from television, digital platforms, music and reality shows inside a grand palace setting. Over the course of a 50 day competition, participants form alliances, compete in unpredictable tasks and navigate eliminations as the field steadily narrows.
Guiding the game is a mysterious figure known as The Lion, an unseen game master whose voice introduces twists, challenges and strategic turns throughout the show, adding an extra layer of suspense to the contest.
What distinguishes The 50 from typical reality competitions is its audience driven prize structure. Instead of the winner taking home the final reward, the prize is awarded to one of the winner’s registered followers through the show’s dedicated app. The mechanism effectively turns viewers into participants, allowing fans to have a direct stake in the outcome.
The contestant lineup features a mix of television actors, reality stars and digital creators, including Karan Patel, Urvashi Dholakia, Divya Agarwal, Mr Faisu and Dushyant Kukreja, each bringing their own fan following to the show.
With its blend of celebrity personalities, strategic gameplay and interactive viewer participation, The 50 has quickly carved out a strong foothold in India’s digital entertainment landscape. Its 8.1 million views in the opening week underline the growing appetite for large scale reality formats designed specifically for OTT audiences.
