Zee Reduces Employees at Its Tech & Innovation Center in Bengaluru by 50%

Zee Entertainment said on Friday that, on the advice of a special committee, it had scaled down the size of its Technology and Innovation Center (TIC) by almost fifty percent. This committee thoroughly examined a number of business verticals, and as a result, the organization streamlined its processes.

In an official statement, Zee Entertainment Enterprises Ltd. (ZEEL), a business vertical of the firm located in Bengaluru that provides technological solutions, announced that the MD & CEO have reduced the number of TIC employees by 50% in order to create a more cost-effective structure.

The precise number of workers affected by the transfer has not been disclosed by the firm, but in its most recent annual report, ZEEL said, “The center has over 650 engineers who give us an unparalleled edge in the race to win the digital ecosystem,” according to a PTI article.

The management team will be guided and given the opportunity to meet important performance criteria by ZEEL via a monthly management mentoring program dubbed the 3M Program.

“The MD & CEO (Punit Goenka) has pruned the TIC’s structure by approximately 50% and streamlined its scope of work based on the guidance received from the board during the recently conducted 3M Program,” ZEEL said in the statement.

According to the statement, TIC will continue to put more of an emphasis on improving the company’s whole content production, distribution, and monetization process going forward by using technology-driven solutions to get deeper insights into customer preferences.

“We have one goal in mind: to provide our audience with outstanding, rich, and captivating material. We will keep winning the hearts and minds of billions of people worldwide, but we have a great deal of work ahead of us to live up to their expectations. We need to combine a creative strategy, in-depth customer data, and cutting-edge technology to do this,” Goenka said.

ZEEL had reported earlier this week that the committee had examined TIC in great depth; last year, TIC had cost over Rs 600 crore.

The committee’s recommendation is to “use the TIC’s services to enhance the company’s content development, distribution, and monetisation approach, and reduce the expenditure at the TIC by 50%, for the financial year 2024–25.”

TIC said that even though it has made significant technological and tool advancements, it must prioritize return on investment.

The committee also recommended that the management “remain focused on its core expertise, ethos and DNA, i.e., content,” and make use of TIC’s services to improve the process of developing and distributing material.

The statement said, “It has also been recommended that the management make use of the artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML) tools available through the TIC to obtain a deeper understanding of the customer profiles.”

The MD and CEO are directly driving ZEEL’s recent announcement of a strategic reorganization of its revenue vertical.

During a conference call for investors earlier this month, the chairman of Zee remarked that since 2020, the industry-wide macro downturn, temporary problems, and managerial bandwidth limits brought on by merger activities have all had an influence on ZEEL’s performance.

The company’s MD and CEO have given the board a business model and plan that include a roadmap for enhancing each business’s performance and efficiency in order to increase EBITDA. The board has also chosen to carefully monitor this plan and model.

Prior to the merger, Zee and Sony Pictures Network India had announced plans to combine to form a USD 10.5 billion media company in India. But the Sony Group was canceled in January, and both parties are now bogged down in court cases and arbitration proceedings.

For the third quarter of the current fiscal year, ZEEL recorded a 2.36 percent reduction in consolidated total revenue to Rs 2,073.36 crore last month.