India, April 24 -- Siju Prabhakaran, chief business officer, ZEE5, is banking on the limited-episode Kannada fantasy thriller 'Jerax' that releases on the streaming platform on April 24 to lift the platform's viewership in Karnataka, a market that he said is underserved. Both Kannada and Marathi language markets are under-explored by OTT platforms and display a healthy appetite for premium content, he said. Ten months ago, ZEE5 positioned itself sharply as a service for multilingual content under the tagline 'Apni Bhasha, Apni Kahaniyan'. "We are also the only large streaming service with language pack pricing and separate heads to drive vernacular businesses," Prabhakaran said. His bet paid off. Today, non-Hindi languages contribute 60-65% viewership on the platform, led by Telugu, Tamil, and Marathi markets. Smaller towns in the south remain a key growth driver, already contributing over 40% of viewership. "Stories born in Madurai, Malappuram, Mandya or Machilipatnam are no longer 'regional cinema' -- they are national cultural events," actor-director and MP Kamal Haasan observed at the JioHotstar event in Chennai in December where the platform announced its investment of Rs 4,000 crore over five years in developing the southern market for OTT content. Large national OTT services' focus on vernacular content is understandable. A March 2026 Ficci-EY media and entertainment report said that though 2025 saw a decline in volume and value of OTT content, 56% of the total content produced for digital platforms was created in regional languages - higher than Hindi's 44% share. Besides, streaming's paying subscriber households are expected to touch 191 million in 2028 from the current 143 million, the report said, justifying their investment in expanding their regional play. "Regional content is no longer just a growth lever for us - it's where leadership is being defined. What's clearly working is consistency: strong engagement, repeat viewing, and stories that travel well beyond their home markets. That's what gives us confidence to keep investing with intent and scale this into a truly national content ecosystem," said Krishnan Kutty, head, entertainment business (South) at JioStar. Vijay Sethupathi starrer 'Muthu Alias Kaattaan', launched in March, has emerged as the number one show from the south on the platform while 'Vikram On Duty' is the most viewed Telugu special by watch time. Initially, the southern markets were slow in adopting OTT owing to their strong movie-going culture. That has changed. As the subscriber base expands, ZEE5 is investing in both large-scale titles and mid-budget stories designed to drive deeper engagement within core markets. "The south is central to the India story", said Nikhil Madhok, director and head of originals at Prime Video India. "Tamil was the first language we built a local language UI (User Interface) for. Today, we have interfaces in Tamil, Telugu, Hindi and English," he said. For Prime Video, 60% of its customers in the country now stream in four or more Indian languages. Not just that. 25% of the viewing time of international shows and movies is now in Indian languages, the Ficci-EY report noted. "Our job is to make sure language never gets in the way of a great story reaching the right viewer -- be it any of our early Tamil Originals like 'Putham Pudhu Kaalai', 'Comicstaan Semma Comedy Pa', 'Modern Love Chennai', or our Telugu Originals like 'Ammu' and 'Modern Love Hyderabad', or IPs that have driven outsized fandom, 'Dhootha', 'Suzhal: The Vortex' and Vadhandhi," Madhok said. Their upcoming South Originals slate will have thrillers, supernatural dramas, comedies and family entertainers, he added. Siju Prabhakaran said ZEE5 is building an ecosystem of creators in vernacular to boost language Originals on the platform. "It's a learning curve since the south is especially aligned to doing movies. Series require different writing and execution," he said. JioHotstar has partnered with the Tamil Nadu government to boost the state's creative economy. Its big investment will go into building infrastructure, talent and new storytelling formats. It will also introduce creator-focused initiatives such as writing labs, mentorship programmes and skill-building workshops in the region. Most national platforms have an eight-language strategy to enable original content across key markets, Ficci-EY report said, adding that India's OTT market crossed Rs 27,200 crore in 2025 and the biggest shift within that growth is the rise of regional languages....