DTH
Gemporia TV hops on to Tata Sky platform
MUMBAI: India’s live jewellery shopping channel Gemporia TV has hopped on to the Tata Sky direct to home (DTH) platform.
The channel will be available on channel no. 155 in Tata Sky.
It may be recalled that Indiantelevision.com had reported earlier this month that the channel was eyeing revenue of Rs 60 – 100 crore by the end of 2016 and was looking at expanding its presence in the market by launching on Tata Sky. The shopping platform has been available on other DTH operators like Dish TV and Videocon d2h since September 2015.
With a market presence of 11 years in the UK, the channel has seen a rapid growth in the overall jewellery retail, and claims to achieve almost eight per cent market share of all hallmarked jewellery sold in the UK. The platform also claims to sell over nine million pieces worldwide all through e-commerce and television.
Gemporia TV co-founder Manuj Goyal said, “In India, we bring you these exquisite pieces, directly from our factories to your home, eliminating all middlemen, bringing the costs lower and at direct-to-home prices. We are enlivened with Gemporia’s expanded audience base of over 50 million homes with the launch on Tata Sky, one of the leading DTH providers in India. Our intention is to be available across DTH platforms and gradually move our presence on cable.”
He further added, “Our product size is constantly increasing to fit the business needs. The jewellery ranges from earrings to necklaces to charms to rings for women and men, in multiple styles. Our average item value has been Rs 4216. For Sterling Silver jewellery, our sweet spot is Rs 999. For Gold Jewellery, we have seen maximum sales in Rs 5000 to 8000 pricing category. Rings are currently 50 per cent of our sales, I guess as most retailers find it challenging to stock rings in different sizes. We keep a wide variety of gemstone jewellery – Rubies, Emeralds, Sapphires, Tanzanites, Pearls, Topaz, Opals, Amethyst, Citrines, Garnets, Onyxs, Tourmalines besides Diamonds. Our presence on Tata Sky brings a whole new audience with a completely different demographic. We are excited to see how these numbers will shift.”
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.
