Zee 5 launches ZAP with Saptharushi to deliver privacy-first audience intelligence

Zee 5 has launched its proprietary Zee 5 Audience Platform (ZAP), powered by audience intelligence company Saptharushi, to strengthen its advertising proposition through privacy-first audience targeting.

The platform combines Zee 5’s understanding of viewing behaviour with consented behavioural and transactional signals from participating partners across sectors such as quick commerce and digital payments. It aims to help advertisers move beyond broad demographic targeting and build audience cohorts aligned with specific campaign objectives.

ZAP’s customised audience intelligence layer allows brands to combine contextual signals from Zee 5 with deterministic signals from partner environments to identify audience intent, category relevance and purchase behaviour. Advertisers can use these insights to activate campaigns while retaining the scale of Zee 5’s platform.


Privacy is central to the operating model. Data remains within respective partner environments, with collaboration enabled through consented queries rather than data transfers. The approach is aligned with the principles of India’s Digital Personal Data Protection (DPDP) framework.

The partnership will also explore co-branded attention and loyalty rewards, particularly around premium content and sports, creating additional engagement opportunities for advertisers.

Tejkarran Singh Bajaj, Business Head – Zee 5 India and AI & Innovation, said ZAP would enable brands to build more nuanced audience cohorts by combining Zee 5’s contextual understanding of viewing behaviour with consented behavioural and transactional signals from participating partners.

Prashant Shetty, Head – Advertisement Revenue, Broadcast & Digital, ZEEL, said the platform would provide advertisers greater flexibility to align campaigns with specific business objectives. Citing Saptharushi’s previous deployments, he said they had demonstrated a “significant, multifold uplift” in click-through rate (CTR) delivery over campaigns activated against a brand’s existing customer relationship management (CRM) audience.

Gowthaman Ragothaman, Founder and CEO of Saptharushi, said the collaboration would make Zee 5’s reach more addressable while allowing data owners to retain control over their information.

“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,” he said.

Founded in 2019 as Aqilliz, Saptharushi is headquartered in Singapore, with operations in India and the UAE. Its platform enables publishers, data partners and brands to collaborate on audience creation without moving or pooling data.