Dish TV is eyeing a quarter of DTH pie

Sets 2015 as deadline

Essel group-promoted direct-to-home (DTH) television service provider Dish TV, which has roped in film star Shah Rukh Khan for a long-term brand endorsement agreement and is aiming for 23-25% of the DTH market share by the year 2015.

Calling it a “secular” projection for the company, Dish TV CEO Arun Kumar Kapoor told DNA Money on Tuesday that “there’s room for four to five DTH players in the country”. By 2015, 40% of the pay TV universe (cable TV and DTH) are likely to be DTH users, significantly up from around 5% now.

Even as rival TataSky had an ad campaign with Hrithik Roshan within a few months of its service rollout, Dish TV waited for over three years to introduce a high-pitched marketing initiative. Why, so late? To that, Kapoor said, Dish TV wanted both volumes and content to go up before roping in a brand ambassador.

Also, with conditional access system (CAS) not taking off at the pace that was expected and competition gearing up in the DTH space, “this is just the right time for the campaign”.

Dish TV refused to reveal any financial details of the ad campaign, but sources put the endorsement amount paid to Shah Rukh Khan at Rs 5-7 crore. It is learnt that the Shah Rukh campaign was shot on the terrace of the actor’s residence, Mannat, in Mumbai.

The campaign will cut across TV, print media, theatres, radio and outdoors in urban as well as rural parts of the country-to be specific in 4,300 towns. 

Since the ad campaign urges viewers not to be ‘satisfied’ or ‘santusht’ with the quality of television that they are getting to watch now, what is Dish TV doing to ensure that audience expectation is met?

According to Kapoor, Dish TV is already offering 180 channels, much more than the competition. “We will remain the largest content provider even in the multi-player environment,” he claimed.

Among other things, he also pointed out that Dish TV is the only DTH platform to offer English films in the ‘movie-on-demand’ service.

It is also the only DTH player to offer mobile satellite TV (priced at Rs 1 lakh) for moving vehicles, and a couple of 100 such dishes have been sold by the company.

Vijay Mallya’s yacht and some warships have these mobile dishes, it is believed. Among others, film stars and tour operators have also subscribed to Dish TV on the move.

Also, Dish TV offers live television on 10 Kingfisher flights. Indian Airlines is also believed to be in talks with Dish TV for the service.

Currently, Dish TV with 2.3 million subscribers and TataSky with around a million users are the only two ‘pay’ DTH platforms in the country.

Public broadcaster Prasar Bharati’s DD Direct Plus with around 2 million subscribers is a free-to-air DTH platform. But, competition is about to get intense in the DTH space, with Sun TV planning a launch sometime end of this month, Anil Ambani’s Reliance Communications in December and Bharti group around March-April, 2008.

Also, there are several DTH applications pending with the government, including one from the Videocon group. Meanwhile, Dish TV has been around for over three years now, and TataSky (a Tata group joint venture with Rupert Murdoch’s Star TV) launched in August 2006.

On whether mergers are a possibility in the DTH sector in India, Kapoor said, “These are early days, not yet”. However, it certainly can’t be ruled out at a later date, he said.