DTH
FDI cap on DTH to stay: Prasad
NEW DELHI: Cold water has been poured over the expectations of Star and Zee-ASC combine if they thought the government would move away from its promised common minimum programme, announced at the beginning, and relax the foreign investment cap in DTH venture from the existing 20 per cent.
This was confirmed by information and broadcasting minister Ravi Shankar Prasad in a written reply to his fellow parliamentarians in the Rajya Sabha (Upper House) today.
After the announcement came in Parliament, a senior I&B ministry official told indiantelevision.com that though the NK Singh panel had suggested raising the FDI cap to 49 per cent in DTH ventures and some of the suggestions were discussed by a group of ministers last week,” DTH was never part of that day’s agenda.”
“We also feel that the minister is not in any hurry to overturn any decision or stand taken by his predecessor,” the official said.
Swaraj had, in fact, told journalists late last year that under her the I&B ministry had rejected the Singh panel recommendation on DTH.
On whether government proposes to put in place a regulatory system to ensure licence for DTH is granted to a foreign company which keeps an Indian company as a dummy, Prasad said I&B ministry regulates grant of licence for these services.
Still, it is also a fact that the files relating to permission sought by Space TV and ASC Enterprises Ltd for DTH licences have been lying with Prasad for the last fortnight waiting for a stand to be taken by him on the issue.
“It is in fact quite frustrating to know that the files are with the minister and no decision is being taken on DTH,” a senior executive of one of the applicant companies said.
As per existing guidelines, total foreign investment including FDI/Non-resident Indian/Overseas Corporate Bodies/Foreign Institutional Investors in DTH broadcasting shall not exceed 49 per cent within which the FDI component shall not exceed 20 per cent.
Meanwhile, Prasad also informed the house that the government was considering a proposal to review the present norms permitting foreign-owned news channels to uplink from India.
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.
