DTH
Dish TV and C21Media collaborate to launch ‘Content India 2025’
Mumbai: : Dish TV India Ltd is set to bring the global ‘content’ franchise to India for the first time ever with Content India 2025, in collaboration with C21Media. This three-day market and conference, to be held in Mumbai, will connect leading content creators and industry experts from around the world. The initiative aims to foster partnerships and enhance collaboration between India’s entertainment industry and global markets.
The inaugural event will take place in April 2026, preceded by an invite-only Content India Summit from 1 to 3 April 2025, which will bring together key figures from both the global and Indian markets to define the mission and objectives for the main event. Content India will follow the format of C21Media’s international events, including Content Americas, Content Canada, Content London, Content LA, and Content Warsaw. The event will feature a marketplace, conferences and networking opportunities to connect creators, producers, distributors, platforms and channels.
With Content India 2025, Dish TV once again takes the lead in the industry to provide a well-structured platform for content creators, tackling long-standing distribution challenges and ensuring that high-quality content reaches its intended audience.
Dish TV India Ltd CEO & executive director Manoj Dobhal said, “India’s content industry stands at the cusp of global recognition, with unparalleled potential waiting to be realized. At Dish TV, we believe that fostering this ecosystem is not just a goal-it’s a commitment to India’s creative future. Our partnership with C21Media is a testament to our dedication, aiming to bridge the gap between local and international talent, and unlock opportunities for Indian creators on the world stage.”
He added, “With Content India 2025, we are building a platform that empowers storytellers, streamlining their path from vision to global audience. As a leader in content distribution, we are proud to support this exciting journey, ensuring that India’s content industry not only grows but thrives globally.”
C21’s editor-in-chief and managing director David Jenkinson stated, “The Indian content sector is prolific and it needs no help from the international community to succeed. However, there is an enormous opportunity to connect key players from the domestic business with those from the global community to bring about next-generation content that works worldwide. There is also a significant tech and post-production community in India and locations that are unrivalled anywhere in the world. We will showcase these at Content India.”
“We are delighted to find a partner in Dish TV that is connected and agnostic, and we look forward to doing great things together,” he added.
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.
