DTH
Doordarshan Freedish to hold e-auction; looks to tot 112 TV channels
NEW DELHI: Doordarshan will be holding its 21st e-auction for its free-to-air DTH platform Freedish on 12 August in an attempt to touch the target of 112 television channels in the next few months.
While Doordarshan has set a reserve price of Rs 3.7 crore per slot for the online e-auction, according to information available with Indiantelevision.com, the bid amount is said to have gone up to Rs 4.2 crore in earlier e-auctions.
However, DD sources refused to divulge the number of slots being auctioned to prevent bidders from forming a consortia to bid or resort to other malpractices.
DD sources also said that while Freedish may be encrypted to keep a tab on the number of subscribers, it would remain free-to-air.
The e-auction will be conducted by C1 India Pvt. Ltd., Noida on behalf of Prasar Bharati.
The reserve price in the 15th e-auction was Rs 3 crore and was raised to Rs 3.7 crore in the 16th auction.
Currently, Freedish has 64 channels including its own channels, and Lok Sabha and Rajya Sabha TV.
The eligibility terms and conditions including other relevant details for this e-auction are displayed on DD’s website- www.ddindia.gov.in.
However, the participation amount (EMD) in the e-auction is Rs 1.5 crore, which has to be deposited in advance on or before 12 August evening along with a non-refundable processing fee of Rs 10,000 in favour of PB (BCI) Doordarshan Commercial Service, New Delhi.
Incremental amount for the auction will be Rs 10 lakh and the time for every slot e-auction will be of fifteen minutes duration.
Of the reserve price, Rs 1.1 crore will be deposited within one month of placement and another Rs 1.1 crore within two months along with service tax of 14 per cent on the bid amount.
The balance bid amount will be deposited within six months, failing which the reserve price will be forfeited.
Applicants must provide details of the uplink and downlink permission documents received from the concerned Ministries with the applications to ensure they are not rejected.
The demand drafts of unsuccessful bidders will be returned immediately or within a week after the e-auction process is completed.
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.
