Zee Media, the digital arm of Zee Entertainment, will acquire 80% majority stake in two of India Today Group companies, Today Merchandise and Today Retail Network, reports the Mint. The companies in process of being acquired are working on creating a retail TV channel and and an ecommerce website to complement the network. Zee Media’s BSE filing (pdf) mentions that it will increase its stake by investing up to Rs 126 crore over the next four years in the companies. The current investment will be made in tranches; by June Zee Media will acquire 49% stake in both the companies by investing Rs 39.78 crore and gain managerial as well as operational control over them. According to Zee Media it will be able to shorten the launch time of the retail TV channel and speed up scaling for the companies. OZEE launch: Last week Zee Digital launched a new video on demand platform called OZEE which streams movies, TV shows, videos and music. As of now, users can use the platform for free, and don’t even have to login to view content. Note that Zee is pretty late to the show. Competitor Star India launched its video streaming service called Hotstar in January last year, while Sony launched its video streaming service called SonyLiv back in 2013. Online only content: In June last year, Zee Entertainment Enterprises (ZEEL) digital ecosystem Zee Digital Convergence (ZDC) and its content studio Essel Vision Productions said that they were working on a new online-only…
