The Platform is Powered by Saptharushi to Deliver Privacy-First Audience Intelligence for Brands
FinTech BizNews Service
Mumbai, 01 November, 2026: As brands increasingly look beyond reach towards relevance, precision and measurable engagement, Zee 5 has partnered with Saptharushi, a specialist in privacy-first audience intelligence and federated data collaboration. Together, they are powering Zee 5’s proprietary Zee 5 Audience Platform (ZAP), a new layer of audience intelligence and activation designed to strengthen the platform’s advertising proposition. With this industry-first offering, Zee 5 is strengthening its ability to help advertisers connect with relevant audiences, make more informed media investments and drive greater value from their campaigns. The collaboration will help advertisers identify and engage relevant audience cohorts on Zee 5, while embedding privacy and responsible data use into the process.
Gowthaman Ragothaman, Founder & CEO, Saptharushi
At the heart of ZAP is a customisable audience intelligence layer that brings together Zee 5’s contextual understanding of what audiences watch and how they engage with consented behavioural and transactional signals from participating partners. Rather than relying only on broad demographics or predefined segments, brands can build more precise cohorts around their category, product and campaign objective, using different combinations of contextual signals from Zee 5 and deterministic signals from leading partners in quick commerce, digital payments and more to identify intent, category relevance and purchase behaviour. This enables advertisers to build more relevant audiences and activate them against specific campaign objectives while retaining the scale of Zee 5’s platform
Privacy remains central to the model. The underlying data stays within the respective partner environments, with collaboration enabled through consented queries rather than the movement of data between partners. This approach is aligned with the principles of India’s Digital Personal Data Protection (DPDP) framework, with privacy, consent and responsible data use built into the operating model. Put simply, the data does not move; the query travels.
Beyond targeting audiences, the collaboration will also explore co-branded attention and loyalty rewards, creating new ways for advertisers to engage audiences around high-interest viewing occasions. Particularly across premium content and sports, brands can explore reward-led experiences that go beyond conventional ad exposure and create opportunities for deeper, more sustained audience engagement.
Speaking about the collaboration, Tejkarran Singh Bajaj, Business Head - Zee 5 India and AI & Innovation, says, “At Zee 5, we are constantly evolving our platform to keep pace with changing audience preferences and the growing needs of brands. Our focus is on building a comprehensive entertainment ecosystem that brings together diverse content, formats and experiences, while creating more meaningful opportunities for brands to connect with audiences. Our offering spans premium SVOD content, Free 5, sports, KidZ, TV shows, Korean and Chinese dramas, anime, micro dramas, news, creator-led content and an expanded English movie slate across languages and formats, catering to varied interests and viewing occasions. With ZAP, we are taking this proposition further through an industry-first approach to audience intelligence and activation. By combining Zee 5's contextual understanding of viewing behaviour with consented behavioural and transactional signals from participating partners, we enable advertisers to move beyond conventional demographic targeting and build more nuanced audience cohorts aligned with their business objectives. By bringing content, scale and audience intelligence together, ZAP marks a significant step towards shaping the future of digital advertising, unlocking new possibilities for brands to connect with consumers in more meaningful, measurable and impactful ways.”
Prashant Shetty, Head – Advertisement Revenue, Broadcast & Digital, ZEEL, says, “What sets ZAP apart is its ability to translate audience insights into actionable advertising opportunities, while keeping privacy at the centre of the process. It empowers brands with greater flexibility to align campaigns with specific business objectives and engage more relevant audiences across media and campaign touchpoints. The impact of this approach is evident in Saptharushi’s previous deployments, which have demonstrated a significant, multifold uplift in click-through rate (CTR) delivery over campaigns activated against a brand’s existing customer relationship management (CRM) audience. This reinforces the value of more intelligent, insight-led audience activation in driving stronger campaign engagement, improved media efficiency and measurable business outcomes.”
Gowthaman Ragothaman, Founder & CEO, Saptharushi, says, “Reach remains the foundation of every great campaign, and Zee 5 offers it across languages, genres and viewing occasions. The next frontier is making that reach addressable: knowing which viewers are genuinely relevant to a brand and reaching them with their permission. Audiences like these are scarce, and Saptharushi was founded on the belief that this scarcity can be solved without anyone giving up their data. Our vision is an open audience economy in which publishers, data partners and brands build audiences together, while each keeps full control of what it owns. We are grateful to Zee 5 for the trust they have placed in us to bring that vision to life on India’s largest homegrown streaming platform. With ZAP, advertisers can build fresh, consented audiences from what people watch and how they buy, across the full breadth of Zee 5. Zee 5 brings the reach. Saptharushi makes it addressable.”
ZAP adds a new layer of intelligence to Zee 5’s evolving advertising proposition. With audiences engaging across premium Originals and movies, seven-language content, Free 5, international entertainment, sports and KidZ, Zee 5 offers advertisers access to a wide spectrum of consumer cohorts across languages, genres, price points and viewing occasions. By combining this content breadth with privacy-safe audience intelligence, customized targeting and new engagement formats, Zee 5 is creating more precise opportunities for brands to connect with relevant audiences and improve the value of their media investments.
