DTH
Nothing decided on DTH plans, says Star’s Altaf Ali Mohammed
Altaf Ali Mohammed, in charge of Star’s DTH and broadband operations in India, today rubbished reports in the press that Star had put together a $ 350 million war chest to vigorously pursue its DTH plans in India this year.
No decisions have been made regarding Star’s DTH venture as there were still a number of issues to be clarified, Mohammed pointed out, while stating that he he had yet to get the full gist of the statement that information and broadcasting minister Sushma Swaraj is reported to have made in parliament on Friday regarding uplinking from India.
Swaraj, in a written statement in Parliament, has been quoted as saying that since the convergence bill was still at the drafting stage, it was not possible to say whether it would have any provision for compulsory uplinking of foreign channels.
As per the DTH notification issued in March on the ground rules for companies wanting to enter DTH in India, any licensee will have to establish an uplink earth station in India within 12 months from the date of issue of license. All content provided by the DTH platform to the subscribers, irrespective of its source, will have to pass through the common encryption and conditional access system, located within the earth station, situated on Indian soil.
Asked for his reaction to strong rumours in the market that Star was the most likely partner in the DTH platform that government internet gateway provider Videsh Sanchar Nigam Ltd (VSNL) was planning to launch before the end of the year, Mohammed said he was in charge of the project and he was putting on record that nothing had been decided yet on the matter. “The fact that no one has applied for a DTH licence till now (the government notification was out in March) should indicate something,” Mohammed stated.
There were still a number of issues which needed clarification before there could be any go-ahead on DTH, Mohammed said. An issue which needed further elaboration from the government was the one requiring a record of all that was aired for a period of 90 days after telecast, he said.
One of the clauses in the guidelines state: “The DTH operator will follow the advertising and programming code drawn up by the information and broadcasting ministry. And it should maintain a record of the advertising and programming for 90 days.”
Mohammed also drew issue over the fixing of responsibility for the content of third party channels with the platform provider. He said that the same rules that applied to cable operators should apply here too because it was only the distribution methodology that was different in the two cases.
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.
