DTH
Dish TV aims to launch OTT service, hybrid box this quarter
MUMBAI: It may be the oldest player but it's mind is as young as you can imagine. With The JioGigaFiber launch, cable and DTH operators are moderating their offerings, distribution strategy as much as possible. Dish TV, the largest DTH player in India is about to offer OTT service and Hybrid box soon. The new OTT offering will be a fair mix of linear TV channels, catch up content along with original content.
“The consumer will have the best of both the worlds getting connected with the Hybrid box and the DTH platform at the same time keeping the cost low and giving excellent value for money,” Dish TV group CEO Anil Dua said in an earnings call after posting Q2 results. He is also optimistic that these innovations will ensure that existing customers are not looking beyond Dish TV.
Dua also said the company is planning to launch the offerings in this quarter only. After the beta phase which is starting soon, it will get into a quick national launch. While he was questioned if it will tie-up with any OTT player for the launch, he made it clear that Dish TV will not be playing as an aggregator. There may be an app-in-app integration later.
“It is around Rs 35 crore on the CAPEX and networking equipment by startup cost and other cost still launched and thereafter it will be very marginal cost purchase of small content items which will be reflected in the content cost,” Dish TV CFO Rajeev Dalmia commented on the expenditure for the OTT Platform.
Although Dish TV has certain plans for partnering with broadband players, till now it has not revealed much. On the other hand, Jio is already getting ready for its bundled service of cable, internet, VoIP especially after the acquisition of stakes in Hathway and Den Networks. There are high chances that customers will tend to pay for a consolidated bill over having three different services.
This has been seen as a tough challenge for DTH players. However, Dua feels it is good for cable and broadband industry. As ARPUs have been low in respective industries, the new development may pave the way for higher ARPUs helping the entire pay-TV space. “In terms of the competitive price offering etc., in short-term, there could be prices which are lower but I think this company has been observed to match that but in long-term the prices have to rise,” he added further.
On the question ofsubsidising OTT or Hybrid boxes, Dish TV is looking at all opportunities that OTT presents. “We will definitely use it as a tool for our existing subscriber so that they don’t kind of look here and there, they have everything available with their Dish TV brand on their platform, but certainly we believe that we are making a good product and it can become an attraction tool as well,” Dua commented.
Dish TV chairman and managing director Jawahar Goel mentioned 4 million boxes are already in the market which are Hybrid-ready. The plan is to convert those into connected boxes in this quarter. Hence, hybridisation of existing boxes is also going to be another opportunity to build the business as well as a new subsidy.
As the parent company has an OTT platform which is gaining more users, the question arises about the justification of another platform from the group.
“Our OTT is meant for more from point of view for subscriber, so we are looking at typically short form kind of content which is different from what the other OTT players are looking at. So we feel that these are absolutely tailor-made for our respective audiences,” Dalmia said.
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.
