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Airtel Digital TV sprints to 5 million subs
NEW DELHI: Airtel Digital TV, the DTH service from Bharti Airtel, today said that it has crossed the milestone of five million subscribers.
Coming in as the fifth operator in the highly competetive Indian DTH market, Airtel Digital TV is the fastest to reach to the mark.
It has been leading industry additions with over 2.8 million customers already in the first 10 months of FY 2010-11. The company claims that the achievement in just 21 months of full scale national operations is the fastest anywhere in the world.
The DTH operator has over 5.1 million customers, as on 31 January 2011.
Airtel Digital TV said that it is available in areas covered by over 21,000 of the country’s approximately 27,000 pin codes. Over 70 per cent of its customers today are coming in from towns with a population less than 100,000. This has made Airtel Digital TV the clear leader in share of new customers’ addition every month in 10 of the 19 state clusters in the country.
Bharti Airtel director and CEO-DTH services Ajai Puri said, “The 5 million customer milestone is a significant step in our journey of making Airtel the most preferred choice of customers on all three screens – Mobile, PC and TV. While on the one hand, we made a conscious decision to invest in the latest MPEG4 DVBS 2 technology and created industry leading partnerships for content and service delivery, the power of brand Airtel and its distribution reach enabled us to get immediate access to a large retail base.
“In doing so, we have consistently garnered a larger share of the category over the last six quarters, thereby gaining critical scale in short time. We are now well placed to realise our vision of becoming the most preferred brand for customers in the DTH category.”
As per the company Maharashtra, Gujarat, Uttar Pradesh, Punjab, Tamil Nadu, West Bengal and the North East are emerging as its biggest markets.
It also said that over 15 per cent of new customer additions for Airtel Digital TV over the last quarter in top metro markets have been coming through the HD platform.
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With 57 per cent single new users, Ashley Madison rebrands as discreet dating platform
Platform says majority of new members now identify as single
INDIA: Ashley Madison is shedding the “married-dating” label that defined it for two decades, repositioning itself as a platform for discreet dating in what it calls the post-social media age.
The rebrand, unveiled in India on 27 February, 2026, marks a structural shift in business model and identity. Once synonymous with married dating, the company now describes itself as the “premier destination for discreet dating” under a new tagline: Where Desire Meets Discretion.
The pivot is data-driven. Internal figures show that 57 per cent of global sign-ups between 1 January and 31 December, 2025 identified as single: a notable departure from the platform’s married core. The company argues that its community has already evolved beyond its original positioning.
“In an age where our lives have been constantly put on public display, privacy has become the new luxury,” said Ashley Madison chief strategy officer Paul Keable. He framed the platform’s offering as “ethical discretion” for singles, separated, divorced and non-monogamous users seeking private connections.
The shift also taps into wider digital fatigue. A global survey conducted by YouGov for Ashley Madison, covering 13,071 adults across Australia, Brazil, Canada, Germany, India, Italy, Mexico, Spain, Switzerland, the UK and the US, found mounting discomfort with hyper-public online lives.
Among dating app users, 30 per cent cited constant swiping and messaging as a source of fatigue, while 24 per cent pointed to pressure to curate public-facing profiles and early personal disclosure. Some 27 per cent said fears of screenshots or information being shared contributed to exhaustion; an equal share cited unwanted attention.
The retreat from oversharing appears broader. According to the survey, 46 per cent of adults actively try to keep most aspects of their life private online. Only 8 per cent feel comfortable sharing most aspects publicly, while 35 per cent say they are becoming more selective about what they disclose.
Ashley Madison is betting that this cultural recalibration towards controlled visibility can be monetised. By doubling down on privacy infrastructure and reframing itself around discretion rather than infidelity, the company is attempting to convert reputational baggage into a premium proposition.
