Industry Analysis: Direct To Home

After a slow start, the DTH market in India is fuelled by fierce

competition between the incumbent Dish TV and challenger Tata Sky,
plus several new entrants, but pricing and exclusivity remain key
contentious issues.
1.0Introduction
In earlier days there was only one TV channel in India the “Doordarshan”, Channel
Doordarshan was owned and operated by government of India. In this era, every home
which had a TV set used to have its own antenna to capture the signals. The Cable
Television Ordinance Law was passed in January 1995. This enabled cable operators to
feed channels and later on private companies were allowed to air their own channels and
this led to the explosive growth in number of TV channels and number of cable operators.
The growth of TV channels & cable operators created a big industry and
market opportunities. There were as many as 1, 00,000 cable operators across
India until few years back. However the services provided by cable operators
were poor. The strikes, increase in tariff plan, selective broadcast and poor
services were major cause of dissatisfaction among the customers. This has
created an opportunity for DTH, which serves an immediate threat to the high-
end cable networks India has about 130 million TV homes of which, Cable &
Satellite (C&S) services are present in 97 million (74%) of the home. The DTH
market in India comprises 11% of the total market with almost 15 million homes.
The DTH industry growth lagged to 10.3% in 2008 from 16.7% a year earlier. But
industry players agree that the digitization drive is expanding by 35-40%
annually. However, industry estimates DTH to touch 35-40 million subscribers
by 2012, and that’s the number that every DTH brand has set its sights on.
By 2015, DTH will enjoy a market share of 40%, digital cable 40% and
analog cable will follow with only 20% market share. The DTH service market in
India has emerged as one of the most lucrative markets which have successfully
resisted the impacts of the current economic slowdown. The slowdown, instead,
proved a boon for the Indian DTH industry as people started to cut on their
entertainment expenditure and instead of viewing movies at theatres, they
preferred to stay at home with their television sets.
The anticipated growth to the efforts of DTH industry players who are all
trying to lure viewers by cutting down prices as well as offering perks even
though it translates into loss of Rs 1,600-2,000 on each new subscriber acquired
by them. They have started to offer a number of value-added services such as
‘movie on demand’, live recording of TV content, matrimonial match-making, etc