DTH
Dish TV bets on ThinkAnalytics to supercharge Watcho’s AI discovery
LONDON: Dish TV India has tapped ThinkAnalytics to power personalised recommendations and search across its Watcho streaming platform, a super-aggregator that bundles more than two dozen OTT services alongside live television.
The deal gives Watcho access to ThinkAnalytics’ ThinkMediaAI suite, covering metadata enrichment, real-time viewer profiling, dynamic user interfaces, rail positioning, editorial curation, A/B testing and business intelligence. The system promises to surface both global hits and niche regional dramas with equal ease, in 12 languages, for millions of paying subscribers.
Dish TV chief technology officer V K Gupta said the partnership delivers “the precision and scale to delight every subscriber,” adding that Watcho’s editorial teams will gain faster decision-making and the ability to experiment rapidly. “Our teams can innovate at speed, maximise audience engagement and unlock new value in today’s dynamic OTT landscape,” he said.
ThinkAnalytics co-founder & CTO Peter Docherty called Watcho “a pioneer in super-aggregating streaming services,” noting that two-thirds of India’s population are millennials or younger. “Dish TV recognises the need to engage these viewers. With ThinkMediaAI, it can monetise that opportunity while delivering a superior viewing experience,” he said.
The agreement underscores Watcho’s shift from a simple content aggregator to a full-fledged entertainment platform with curated, immersive experiences. As the library expands with more international and regional titles, the AI engine is expected to ensure high-quality recommendations even for hyper-local interests.
Dish TV’s wider footprint is formidable: more than 587 channels and services, including 89 HD feeds, four international channels, 19 value-added services and 21 leading OTT apps. Its distribution network stretches across 9,500 towns via 2,334 distributors and about 158,000 dealers, supported by 24/7 call centres in 14 cities handling queries in 12 languages.
For ThinkAnalytics, whose technology already powers discovery for global heavyweights, the tie-up offers a showcase in one of the world’s fastest-growing streaming markets, where competition for attention is as fierce as the appetite for content.
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.
