DTH
Airtel Digital TV launches ‘Made in India’ set-top-boxes
MUMBAI: Airtel Digital TV, the DTH arm of Bharti Airtel, has launched its first indigenously manufactured set-top-boxes (STBs), which are aptly called ‘Made in India’ STBs.
Conceptualised and designed in India, the HD STBs will be manufactured at a facility in Pune (Ranjangaon) with an aim to match global technology standards to provide the best of experience to customers.
The boxes will serve HD users to begin with and soon all Airtel Digital TV’s set-top-boxes will be manufactured in India. This move makes Airtel Digital TV the latest corporate to join the Narendra Modi government’s Make in India initiative. The launch promotes an ecosystem that will drive indigenous manufacturing of DTH STBs empowered with production capabilities as well as technical expertise within India.
When asked about the initiative, Bharti Airtel DTH and media CEO Shashi Arora said, “With this we aim to reduce our imports and thus help drive employment and growth within the country. In the long run, cost synergies will further help us extend more benefits to our customers.”
Based on an in-house design by MyBox Tech, which is a subsidiary of Hero Electronix, and ST Microelectronics, a multinational manufacturer of Integrated Devices and semiconductors, the STBs will offer features including Full HD 1080p support, MPEG-4 video with Dolby Digital Plus Surround Sound, 5X picture clarity, unlimited recording (via USB-drive), and USB-based Wi-Fi connectivity for On-demand, Anytime TV and Interactive Gaming.
Welcoming this move by Airtel Digital TV, minister of state for Information and Broadcasting Rajyavardhan Rathore said, “It is great that Airtel Digital TV is aligning itself with our Make in India vision as this will certainly pedal the fast gaining momentum of the initiative further.”
Airtel Digital TV connection on these HD boxes will be available under various packages.
DTH
Prasar Bharati’s WAVES earns Rs 2.9 crore in first year
Platform scales content, users but monetisation gaps limit revenue growth.
MUMBAI: Big waves, small ripples at least for now. When Prasar Bharati launched its OTT platform WAVES at the 55th International Film Festival of India in November 2024, it pitched a bold vision: a homegrown rival to global and domestic streaming giants, blending video, audio, gaming and commerce into a single digital ecosystem. Five months into FY2024–25, however, the platform’s revenue stands at just Rs 2.90 crore, a figure that underscores the gap between ambition and monetisation.
On paper, WAVES looks anything but modest. The platform has ingested 13,608 titles, totalling 9,495 hours of content, with over 13,000 titles already live. It has streamed more than 575 live events from the Mahakumbh Amrit Snan and the 76th Republic Day parade to the Hockey India League, Kabaddi World Cup and Mann Ki Baat while offering 74 live TV channels and 12 radio channels. With over 10 lakh registered users and more than 200 content partners onboarded, the scale resembles that of a fully operational streaming service rather than a pilot project.
The architecture supporting this scale is equally robust. Built under Prasar Bharati’s Central Archives vertical, WAVES runs on a cloud-based infrastructure with DRM, encryption and an integrated analytics dashboard. It includes dedicated units for content ingestion, quality control, publishing, graphics, marketing and billing, and is distributed across platforms such as OTTplay, Tata Play and BSNL. The offering extends beyond video to include audio-on-demand, e-games and even e-commerce via ONDC integration.
Yet, the numbers reveal a core disconnect. Despite its scale, WAVES generated just Rs 2.90 crore in a market where India’s OTT industry crossed Rs 23,000 crore in 2024. A key bottleneck lies in monetisation infrastructure: subscriptions cannot currently be purchased within the app and must be completed via an external website. In a mobile-first country where over 95 per cent of OTT consumption happens on smartphones, this extra step creates friction that most users are unlikely to overcome.
Ironically, content is not the problem, it is the platform’s biggest strength. Prasar Bharati holds one of the world’s richest broadcast archives, including 45,154 hours of digitised Akashvani programming and 35,723 hours from Doordarshan. For WAVES alone, over 3,800 hours of archival content have been made OTT-ready, including classics such as Ramayan and Shaktimaan, alongside rare cultural recordings and historical broadcasts.
There are early signs that this library holds commercial potential. Revenue from archival content licensing rose sharply to Rs 3.38 crore in FY24, up from Rs 67 lakh the previous year. Meanwhile, free digital platforms continue to drive massive reach, the PB Archives Youtube channel clocked 119.78 million views and added 4,02,000 subscribers in FY2024–25, crossing 1.7 million in total, while DD News has over 5.84 million subscribers.
That, however, presents a strategic dilemma. While free distribution builds scale, it also conditions audiences to expect content at zero cost making it harder to transition to paid models. WAVES, designed as a hybrid AVOD-SVOD platform with advertising and subscription layers, is yet to fully crack this balance.
The broader challenge is not technological but strategic. In an ecosystem dominated by platforms offering seamless payments, aggressive pricing and high-budget originals, WAVES is still bridging the gap between being a content repository and a commercially viable product.
For now, the platform reflects both promise and paradox. It has the scale, the content and the infrastructure but until monetisation catches up, WAVES remains less a revenue engine and more a digital showcase of what India’s public broadcaster could become.
