Zee5, the content app from the Zee Group, has joined the NetRange, an app store found on televisions manufactured by global TV makers such as Philips, Grundig, HiSense, Thomson, Skyworth, Sharp and TCL.
With this, the Zee5 app will become instantly available on lakhs of smart TVs across the world.
“The ZEE5 app will be available on all NetRange’s Smart TV platforms across its 100+ global network, providing yet another platform for users to access ZEE5’s vast content bouquet,” the company said.
Presence on platforms like NetRange is useful because, unlike on phones, Smart TV makers often do not allow their customers to install apps from Android Play Store or other third party stores.
Custom app stores like NetRange are also often found on TVs that do not run Android, and therefore do not support the Play Store version of Zee5.
Besides NetRange and Android, there are several other platforms that power smart TVs, and Zee said it is in talks with these platforms as well.
“Other platforms in the pipeline includes Amazon fire TV stick, Apple TV, connected TV apps.”
ZEE5, which was launched earlier this year, is arguably the fastest growing content app in India, and is backed by the Zee Group, India’s second biggest content producer.
The app has content in 12 languages – English, Tamil, Hindi, Malayalam, Telugu, Kannada, Marathi, Bengali, Oriya, Bhojpuri, Gujarati and Punjabi.
ZEE5 has 100,000 hours of on-demand content, with more being added rapidly.
It also offers over 60 live TV channels.
The addition of the NetRange platform takes the total versions of Zee5 to four, including Android, iOS and the website versions.