The OTT industry has shifted its focus to achieving profitability after years of heavy investments in subscriber acquisition, which had taken a toll on their P&L.
In FY25, ZEE5 reduced its Ebitda loss to ₹548 crore from ₹1,105 crore in the previous year. The company has been aggressively cutting costs to achieve its goal of an 18-20% Ebitda margin in FY26.
“This year, we are striving to reduce our Ebitda losses by more than 50-60% compared to last year. ZEE5 is the only division in Zee Entertainment that is not yet profitable, and we are looking to make it Ebitda-positive,” he said.
According to Goenka, producing content at a competitive price has been Zee’s strength, and the company wants to maintain the cost advantages it has built over the years.
ZEE5’s focus on investing more in the story than in the star cast has helped it reduce costs-unlike other major streamers who spend huge amounts of money on star-driven shows, he noted.”We will control our costs and at the same time deliver quality content to audiences,” he said.ZEE5 is planning to launch 100 content titles in FY26, with a focus on language-based offerings in markets like Tamil, Telugu, Kannada, Malayalam, Marathi and Bengali. In FY25, the platform launched 60 pieces of content across movies and originals.
Goenka also downplayed concerns that stringent cost controls would impact revenue growth, even as the platform competes with giants like Netflix, Prime Video and JioHotstar. ZEE5’s revenue grew by 6% in FY25 to ₹976 crore.
“Controlling costs can still help you grow users and offer a great content experience because how you tell the story is more important than the face behind it,” he said.
While ZEE5 has a hybrid subscription and ad-led model, Goenka sees a lot of potential in the subscription model and intends to partner with telcos, broadband players and other distribution platforms to reach new audiences in tier-2 and -3 cities.
The platform also aims to double down on technology to improve user experience and experiment with emerging genres like short-form vertical video.
