DTH
QYOU Media joins hands with Airtel Digital TV
MUMBAI: QYOU Media has announced that it has partnered with Airtel Digital TV, the DTH arm of Bharti Airtel (Airtel), to bring The Q India’s 24/7 linear stream of digital first content to Indian homes. Airtel Digital TV customers can now consume The Q India’s content that has been curated from top creators in the region, as part of their monthly DTH pack.
With the average Indian consumer increasingly watching short-form video content on social media platforms like YouTube and Facebook each month, there is growing opportunity to engage customers with short form content on a regular basis. Airtel Digital TV, which reaches over 14 million homes across India, is bringing The Q India to its platform to leverage this trend. The Q India will be available on channel number#125 on Airtel digital TV and will be broadcast in Hindi.
Bharti Airtel director – DTH and CEO Sunil Taldar said, “We are constantly innovating to add greater value for customers and enhance their TV experience on our platform. We are always working towards bringing new content and relevant programming for our customers. With this partnership with QYOU Media, we aim to bring the growing trend of short form video consumption to homes on their TV.”
With this partnership, The Q India will continue to expand the viewership reach for its premium content coming from India’s leading digital content creators. The Q India is a 24/7 linear service stream of premium curated content that launched in December 2017 and is aimed at Young Indians (20-30 years). The service has established content partnerships that include some of the most watched and influential digital content creators in India. Content featuring The Q India include the popular web-series; Official Chukyagiri, What The Folks and Being Indian as well as curated episodes from leading digital programs in India, including: 101 India, Pocket Aces, Comic Wallah and BLUSH.
The Q India GM and co-founder Sunder Aaron said, “Young Indians have been lacking a general entertainment brand or service that speaks directly to them. Our mission at The Q India is to address this need with a powerfully relevant service proposition that is entirely unique in proposition, programming the best Indian video content from digital creators who are streaming across platforms. We are delighted to join Airtel, and happy that both platform and advertising partners are beginning to recognise the potential The Q India offers them to reach millions of millennial and gen Z digital savvy viewers in their sub base who are now able to enjoy India’s best digital content through The Q India service.”
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.
