Zee Entertainment Enterprises Limited (Zeel) plans to invest Rs 1 billion over three years in its edutainment channel ZeeQ which launches on 5 November.

Targeted at the 4-14 age group, Zee Q will be the 32nd channel from Zee network and mark its entry into the fast growing Indian kid's broadcasting market.

The bilingual channel will have 70 per cent content in Hindi and 30 per cent in English. Zee Q will be a pay channel and have a mix of home produced and acquired content.

Zeel MD & CEO Punit Goenka said, "Zee as a group stands by its principle of improvement of human capital and so is the initiative ZeeQ. It is a step ahead in fostering the curiosity amongst children through fun and entertainment."

The channel will also draw synergy from Zee Group's education business, Zee Learn. "During production and acquisition of content, we took into consideration the learnings from the 18 years that Zee Learn Limited has been interacting with as many as 300000 students, parents and teachers across India. And this has helped us make its edutainment content engaging and relevant to the needs of Indian children," Goenka said.

Zee Learn Design Head (Communication/IT/Content & Academics) Subhadarshi Tripathy has been named as the business head of the channel.

"Zeel will invest close to Rs 100 crore (Rs 1 billion) of money that will be pumped in primarily into content, people, and marketing," Tripathy tells Indiantelevision.com.

Tripathy was confident that the channel will break-even in five years. "We will break-even in five years," affirms Tripathy.

"The content is divided into two parts. The animated content is for the age group between 4-7 years. The second part of the content is locally produced and tailor-made for Indian kids for the 8-14 age group," said Tripathy.

Indiantelevision.com had earlier reported that Zee would be launching a kids channels called Zee Q.

Tripathy said subscription income is important since the channel has decided not to show cola or junk food ads. This will limit Zee Q's advertiser pool but the objective is to gain the confidence of parents that nothing on the channel will have negative impact on kids.

"We have a nutritionist on board who tells us what we can take and what we can't. That's phenomenal because we won't have ads that harm child's safety. We will stay away from cola or processed food ads," said Tripathy.

The content strategy for Zee Q is simple: to make it fun and educative at the same time. However, it will be a tough road ahead for Zee Q as it will be pitted against well-entrenched kids broadcasters like Cartoon Network, Disney, and Nick who currently enjoy loyalty of the age group that Zee Q is eyeing.

The broadcaster will air four hours of original content daily which includes three to three and half hours of animated content and one hour of locally produced live action shows. Going forward, half of the original content will be local productions which have been commissioned.

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