Cable TV
‘Broadcasters should black out areas where DAS implementation is tardy; Govt should move SC:’ VD Wadhwa
An Alumnus of Harvard Business School and a fellow member of the Institute of Company Secretaries of India, V D Wadhwa carries his multifarious responsibilities with a humility and ease that belies the positions he had occupied in the private sector.
SitiCable executive director and CEO, Wadhwa has almost 30 years of general management experience in consumer lifestyle and retail industries. Additionally, he has also served on various committees of FICCI and Assocham besides serving as president of the Horological Federation of India.
His personal interests include – playing squash, adventure sports, and travelling.
Donning the hat of All India Digital Cable Federation’s president for the past 15 months, Wadhwa is convinced that the move towards digital addressable system (DAS) is in the right direction. In an interview with Indiantelevision.com, he justifies this and is of the opinion that there should be no let up.
Excerpts from the interview:
With cable operators and multi system operators in so many states having got extension orders from the courts, do you feel the government should have given more time before implementing Phase III covering all urban areas?
No, I feel that the Government has taken the right decision in not extending the date except where Court orders have come. With reports that there are pockets even in the first two phases where analogue signal is still being beamed, any extension by the Government would have made the MSOs and LCOs go slow and this could have gone on for years.
At least the stakeholders now know they have a deadline that they have to meet. We should not forget that all stakeholders knew since September 2014 that the Government had set a deadline it would stick to, and had enough time to get ready for DAS Phase III.
What is the way out?
The Government should go to the Supreme Court and stop all the High Court cases on DAS.
But there is great shortage of set top boxes, if you go by the pleadings before the High Courts…
In SitiCable, we have 11 million subscribers on our network and we have already seeded three million STBs in Phase III. I am confident that we will complete five to six million in the next couple of months and reach 10 million by March. Thus we will cover 6.5 million boxes of the first three phases. Other stakeholders had enough time to order STBs if they had acted in time.
But these are Chinese STBs with little or no service.
They are Chinese, but they are reliable and when we fit this in any household, we give the requisite service for taking care of any problems.
What about indigenous STBs?
It is true that there is very little indigenous production with just two manufacturers. There are less than two per cent indigenous STBs. The Government will have to facilitate more under its Make in India scheme. But that is not our field. We have expertise as the distribution pipe.
Pricing of STBs is also a problem since there is no fixed rate.
STBs had initially cost much more, but are now being sold for just around Rs 1200 and even on a rental basis.
What do you think should be done to speed up the DAS process?
Implementation on the ground needs support. And the broadcasters should black out areas where implementation is tardy.
And now the Government is gearing up for Phase IV, which covers the rural areas…
In my view, Phase III and Phase IV should have been done together as the government had initially planned. In any case, there is a 30 per cent base of direct-to-home (DTH) platforms in Phase IV so a large pocket is already digitised. In fact, the total DTH segment in Phase III and IV is around seventy per cent.
What are SitiCable’s future plans?
We are very clear that we now have to concentrate on broadband and add on at least 500,000 subscribers every year.
Cable TV
Hathway Cable appoints Gurjeev Singh Kapoor as CEO
Leadership change comes as cable TV faces shrinking subscriber base and modest earnings pressure
MUMBAI: Hathway Cable and Datacom has tapped industry veteran Gurjeev Singh Kapoor as chief executive officer, marking a leadership pivot at a time when India’s cable television business is under mounting strain.
Kapoor will take over from Tavinderjit Singh Panesar, who is set to retire in August after a long innings with the company. Panesar, chief executive since 2023, has held multiple leadership roles at Hathway, including his latest stint beginning in 2022.
Kapoor brings more than three decades of experience in media and entertainment. He most recently led distribution at The Walt Disney Company’s Star India business, now part of JioStar. His career spans television distribution and affiliate partnerships, with stints at Sony Pictures Networks India, Discovery Communications and Zee Entertainment.
Panesar, with over three decades in the industry, has worked across strategic planning, distribution and business development in media, broadcasting and manufacturing. His past associations include ESPN Star Sports, Star India, Apollo Tyres and JK Industries.
The transition lands as the cable sector grapples with structural disruption. Traditional operators are losing ground to streaming platforms, while telecom and broadband players tighten the squeeze with bundled offerings.
An EY report estimates India’s pay-TV base could shrink by a further 30 to 40 million households by 2030, taking the total down to 71 to 81 million. The slide follows a loss of nearly 40 million homes between 2018 and 2024, a contraction that has already wiped out more than 37,000 jobs in the local cable operator ecosystem.
Hathway’s numbers reflect the strain. The company reported a consolidated net profit of Rs 93 crore for FY25, down from Rs 99 crore a year earlier. Revenue inched up to Rs 2,040 crore from Rs 1,981 crore. As of December 2025, it had about 4.7 million cable TV subscribers and roughly 1.02 million broadband users.
Kapoor steps in with a familiar brief but a shrinking playbook. In a market where viewers are cutting cords faster than companies can reinvent them, the new chief executive inherits a business fighting to stay plugged in.
