DTH
Tata Sky partners with Vedantu to empower JEE & NEET aspirants
Mumbai: Content distribution and Pay TV platform Tata Sky has partnered with Vedantu to make quality education accessible and affordable to students across India.
For ease of access to the content, the service is also made available on the Tata Sky mobile app. Aspirants can learn and repeat batches, get access to catch-up and On-Demand content including syllabus revision, tests, class notes, among others. Students can also pose a question and have doubts addressed by expert Master Teachers from Vedantu. The service will also provide exam preparation material that can be accessed via the app. Furthermore, subscribers to Tata Sky will receive a special discount on Vedantu’s Live learning programs and be able to access Live classes, curriculums, course revision material etc.
Commenting on the launch of the service, Tata Sky’s chief commercial and content officer, Pallavi Puri, said, “TV has the ability to reach mass audiences across the country. Delivering quality education through TV will not only benefit the maximum number of aspirants but will also take care of the lack of broadband availability which is faced by students from smaller towns and rural areas.”
“Competitive exams require a designated method of preparation. Together with Vedantu, we are providing access to course materials, resources, quality instructors to diverse populations from a variety of backgrounds, abilities, and learning preferences, thereby bringing superior education several steps closer to the aspirants,” she further added.
As per the partnership, two dedicated linear platform services– Tata Sky JEE Prep and Tata Sky NEET Prep– will cater to students from classes 9th to 10th for foundation preparation (IIT, NEET, NTSE, Olympiads) and core syllabus for 11th to 12th IIT JEE Main, JEE Advanced (engineering), and NEET (medical). The learning will be delivered by Vedantu’s Master Teachers including academics from IIT and AIIMS with proven track records in teaching. The medium of teaching will be a mix of English and Hindi.
Vedantu’s COO, Arvind Singhal, said, “30 million-plus students across K-12 and test preparation segments every month benefit from Vedantu’s LIVE learning. This partnership is another step in the direction of our vision of taking quality education to every household at affordable prices.”
In addition to providing students with a fun and engaging learning experience, the classes will also include interactive quizzes that students respond to using the TV remote.
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.
