DTH
DishTV ties up with Shemaroo; launches Miniplex
MUMBAI: DishTV has expanded its gradient of value added services by tying up with Shemaroo Entertainment, one of India’s leading entertainment content houses, to launch a new premium service called ‘Miniplex”.
Miniplex is a cross platform subscription-based movie premiere service that provides the audiences a unique opportunity to view premiere and also premium movie content for a nominal monthly subscription fee.
Speaking to the tie-up, DishTV CEO Arun Kumar Kapoor, “Being a pioneer and market leader DishTV has always stood up to its promise of providing maximum Width and depth of content. We have always taken the lead in enhancing the value proposition and believes in providing the maximum and the best in entertainment to its subscribers. We are glad to announce our partnership with Shemaroo to launch Miniplex on our platform. The experience of watching latest movies at a click of a button has redefined the way consumers watch movies today. With this latest addition to our value added service we take the entertainment quotient a notch higher and allow movie buffs to watch latest blockbusters in the comfort of their home at relatively much reasonable cost.”
This premium movie service will premiere latest blockbuster movies every Friday. Additionally, it’s is an ad free subscription based service which will also showcase other recent movies.
Shemaroo Entertainment Limited director Hiren Gada too shared his thoughts on the occasion: “We are glad to now launch Miniplex on DishTV. This tie up will enhance our reach across the country. A number of movies get released in theatres but go missing on TV. Miniplex intends to bridge this gap through premium ad free viewing experience. The service is already doing well on other platforms and we are happy to offer it to DishTV audience now.”
With Miniplex, customers can avail premium movie content for a subscription fee of Rs 60 per month. This premium movie service will be available on channel number 212 on DishTV & Zing. Customers can easily activate this service by giving a missed call on 18002741100 or through SMS
The service offers an un-paralleled experience to the movie viewers with ease of consumption as movies are scheduled at fixed timings throughout the day. Hence the viewers have the option of watching the movie at their convenience and leisure. The service is designed such that it gives the audience theatre-like-feel at home.
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.
