Amid the forex fluctuation and stiff taxes amounting to around 40% of the revenue, Essel group’s DTH player Dish TV is confident of adding 3 million fresh subscriptions in the financial year 2009-10 to reach 6 million connections by the financial year 2011. Dish TV has already crossed 25 million subscriptions since its inception in 2003, and is intending to keep pace with the 30% growth of country’s television penetration rate, said V K Gupta, chief operating officer of the company.
However, he was unwilling to comment or confirm that expansion plans announced are linked to the Rs 11.6 billion rights issue aimed to finance the capex plans including fresh customer acquisitions involving cost intensive home hardware installations, some time last year. ” I was under legal obligation not to disclose about the rights issue,” he said. While speaking about the robust brand penetration in south market, Gupta said out of 48% nationwide market share, south accounts for about 30%.
In particular, he said Tamil bouquet offered by dish network will be expanded to include more Tamil channels enhancing the choice for Tamil viewers with in their a la carte. Besides south optimism, Dish TV has less than 1% churn rate denoting lesser subscriber attrition rate, he added. Divulging the promising source of future revenue growth, he said VAS and active services platforms are two major areas to be focussed upon.
“VAS accounts for less than 2% of our revenue that we wish to scale up to 6% by 2010-11 through services like video on demand (VoD). Similar to Sony entertaintment and Disney pictures we are entering into tie-ups film production units to offer unmatched VoD. On the interactive services front we are planning to aggressively promote banking, matrimony, travelling, bhakti services in the niche consumer category”, he noted. In near future with the availability option of reserve transponders the total channel bouquet will be ramped up from 225 channels to 400 channels,” he pointed out.