DTH
Dish TV announces fresh Videocon d2h Nasdaq delisting date
BENGALURU: Dish TV India Limited (Dish TV), as successor to Videocon d2h, announced a revised timetable for the anticipated delisting of Videocon d2h American depositary shares (ADSs) from the Nasdaq Global Market (Nasdaq). The timing of the global depositary shares (GDS) effective date (as defined below) has been revised and will no longer occur on 5 April 2018.
A Dish TV filing says that it is intended that the Videocon d2h ADSs will be voluntarily delisted from Nasdaq following the close of trading on 11 April 2018. As such, the last day of trading of Videocon d2h ADSs on Nasdaq is expected to be on 11 April 2018 and the delisting of the Videocon d2h ADSs from Nasdaq is expected to take effect on 12 April 2018. As soon as practicable following the effectiveness of the delisting from Nasdaq, Dish TV will file a Form 15F with the SEC to deregister with the US Securities and Exchange Commission and terminate its reporting obligations under the SEC Act of 1934. It is currently anticipated that, subject to approval by the UK Listing Authority, the new Dish TV GDRs issued in exchange for the Videocon d2h ADSs will be admitted to trading on the Professional Securities Market of the London Stock Exchange plc on or about 13 April 2018.
As per the second updated mandatory Exchange notice, effective as of 12 April 2018 (the GDS Effective Date):
(i) all outstanding equity shares of Videocon d2h as of the scheme effective date, including equity shares underlying Videocon d2h ADSs, will be mandatorily exchanged for new equity shares of Dish TV. In such mandatory exchange, 857,785,766 new equity shares of Dish TV will be issued in exchange for the outstanding equity shares of Videocon d2h as of the scheme effective date. The number of outstanding equity shares of Videocon d2h as of the scheme effective date was 424,997,937. Accordingly, the share exchange ratio will be 857,785,766 divided by 424,997,937 (the share exchange ratio), which is approximately 2.01832925 new equity shares of Dish TV for every 1 equity share of Videocon d2h (rounded to eight decimal places);
(ii) holders of Videocon d2h ADSs will be entitled to receive on a mandatory basis such number of new Dish TV GDS that equals the share exchange ratio multiplied by four, which is approximately 8.07331699 new Dish TV GDSs for every 1 Videocon d2h ADS (rounded to eight decimal places).
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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.
