DTH
Dish TV India Limited achieves ISO 27001 certification
MUMBAI: Dish TV India Limited, world’s largest single country DTH Company, has achieved the ISO 27001 Certification, the international standard that sets out and describes requirements and best practices for an Information Security Management System (ISMS). Dish TV India has received ISO 27001 certification for its Noida and Greater Noida facilities.
ISO 27001, considered the gold standard for information security,ensures systematic examination of the organization’s security risks leading to design and implementation of a coherent and comprehensive suite of information security controls. The standard also includes establishing, implementing and operating an ISMS along with constant monitoring, review and improvement so that security controls meet the organization’s information security needs on an ongoing basis.
Exhilarated at the achievement, Dish TV India Limited, Group Chief Executive Officer, Mr. Anil Dua said, “Our unwavering dedication towards ensuring the very best entertainment experience for our customers is evident from our efforts in achieving new milestones and setting very high standards. The prestigious ISO 27001 certification will help us set the highest standard of information security controls & measures to protect information from any internal or external threat.”
Delighted at receiving the certification, DishTV India Limited, Chief Technical Officer, Mr. V. K. Gupta said, “With ISO 27001 certification, we have reinforced our commitment to providing complete assurance to our customers towards our security protocols, controls and practices. Information security management encompasses all types of information and determines how information is processed, stored, transferred, archived and destroyed. Dish TV India will continue its endeavor towards protection of information assets from potential security breaches.”
Under the certification, Dish TV India implemented 114 controls, spanning 14 domains encompassing various departments such as IT, HR, Sales, Revenue Assurance, Administration, Business Process Engineering, Call Centre technology, RF and Electrical. With more than 10 months of planning and implementing stringent controls, Dish TV India defined well-rounded ISMS policies and ensured complete employee awareness and compliance.
Dish TV India believes that secure information is one that ensures confidentiality, integrity and availability and therefore, the need to protect information through appropriate security controls and measures.
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.
