DTH
Airtel Digital TV revenue, PAT and EBITDA up in Q3 2018
MUMBAI: Bharti Airtel’s DTH arm Airtel Digital TV has seen a 10.4 per cent revenue growth in the quarter ending 31 December 2017 (Q3-2018) compared with Q3 2017 (y-o-y). Earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortisation (EBITDA) grew by 22 per cent y-o-y in Q3 2018. Airtel DTH’s contribution to the overall Airtel revenue and EBITDA has stayed the same at 6 per cent.
Airtel Digital TV’s revenue for Q3 2018 saw revenue rise to Rs 964.2 core from Rs 936.9 crore in Q2 2018 and higher than the Rs 873.5 crore y-o-y. EBITDA rose to Rs 370.8 crore from Rs 351.7 crore in Q2 and Rs 302.6 crore y-o-y.
Earnings before interest and taxes (EBIT) saw a huge jump from Rs 123 crore in Q2 2018 to Rs 150 crore this quarter, a 22 per cent rise. This was 2.2 times than Rs 68.4 crore reported in the year ago quarter.
The DTH segment assets were Rs 2,659.1 crore, up from Rs 2,590.7 crore in the previous quarter and Rs 2,399.3 crore in Q3 2017. The segment’s liabilities increased to Rs 33,19.3 crore from Rs 3,279.8 crore in the previous quarter and Rs 3,030.8 in Q3 2017.
Airtel Digital TV’s capex during the quarter under review was Rs 236 crore, 11 per cent lower y-o-y from as against Rs 265 crore spent in the corresponding year ago quarter. Cumulative investments increased by 8 per cent y-o-y to Rs 7,799.3 crore from Rs 7,212.7
Subscribers grew by 3.1 per cent to 1.3937 crore, up from 1.3521 crore in the previous quarter and a 10.7 per cent increase y-o-y from 1.2588 crore. A total of 416,000 subscribers were added in the corresponding quarter. Average revenue per user (ARPU) remained flat at Rs 233 (just 0.4 per cent growth from the corresponding quarter a year ago). Monthly churn reported for Q3 2018 stood at 1.2 per cent (1.4 per cent reported in the previous quarter; 1.3 per cent in Q2 2017).
The DTH business saw no additions of districts this quarter and the number remained at 639 numbers.
Airtel’s overall revenue dropped by 12.9 per cent y-o-y to Rs 20,319 crore from Rs 23,336 crore. Its revenue dropped to Rs 15,294 crore, 11.3 per cent y-o-y and down from the Rs 16818.3 crore in the previous quarter. This was mainly due to mobile drop of 17.6 per cent. Mobile broadband customers increased by 64.9 per cent to 6.21 crore from 3.77 crore in the corresponding quarter last year. Mobile data traffic grew by more than 6 times to 110,600 crore MBs in the quarter as compared with 172,000 crore MBs in the corresponding quarter last year. Total India mobile subscribers increased by 2.9 per cent from the previous quarter to 29.0 crore, which is also 9.1 per cent growth y-o-y.
Airtel’s profit before tax stood at Rs 838.1 crore, lower than the Rs 1298.8 crore reported in the previous quarter. Net income also dropped to Rs 305.8 crore from Rs 343 crore.
Airtel India and South Asia MD and CEO Gopal Vittal said. “Regulatory fiat in the form of a cut in domestic IUC rates has exacerbated the industry ARPU decline in Q3 18. The recent announcement of reduction in international termination rates will further accentuate this decline and benefit foreign operators with no commensurate benefit to customers. Continued investments in data capacities, strategic partnerships with content and handset providers and focus on customer friendly innovations like data rollover has led to healthy customer additions of 0.81 crore during the quarter. Q3 2018 has also seen the highest ever broadband site deployment of 32K in any quarter, complementing the robust data and voice traffic growth of 544 per cent and 50 per cent respectively on a y-o-y basis. We are committed to remaining the operator of choice for all customers in this rapidly consolidating industry.”
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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.
