India, April 24 -- Siju Prabhakaran, chief business officer, ZEE5, is banking on the limited-episode Kannada fantasy thriller 'Jerax' that releases on the streaming platform on April 24 to lift the platform's viewership in Karnataka, a market that he said is underserved. Both Kannada and Marathi language markets are under-explored by OTT platforms and display a healthy appetite for premium content, he said.

Ten months ago, ZEE5 positioned itself sharply as a service for multilingual content under the tagline 'Apni Bhasha, Apni Kahaniyan'. "We are also the only large streaming service with language pack pricing and separate heads to drive vernacular businesses," Prabhakaran said. His bet paid off. Today, non-Hindi languages contribute 60-...