Mumbai: In addition to launched app for Smart TV, Dish TV will launch a mobile content app by December, featuring a fair mix of linear TV channels, catch up content as well as original content. Even though it is part of the Zee group, which already has a content app ZEE5 with live channels, movies, videos and exclusive content, the Dish TV app will be somewhat different from ZEE5 that will be targeting different set of audience.
“We are talking of different customers and different products there, so the group company has a typical OTT (over-the-top app) which is in the broadcasting space,” he said, pointing out that Zee5 has a focus on longer web-series and exclusive content. “Our OTT is meant for more from point of view for subscriber, so we are looking at typically short form kind of content which is different from what the other OTT players are looking at.”
The idea behind the app is not to be “an aggregator” of content from other providers, said Dua.“Of course, we may build app-in-app integration but as I said we will [initially] provide several live TV channel, we will provide catch-up TV and we will provide some exclusive content”.
The policy seems to be similar to that of Tata Sky, which provides live TV channels and repurposed content from broadcasters on its mobile app.
Dish TV, like other satellite companies, has been worried about customers disconnecting their services due to the proliferation of apps such as Hotstar, Amazon Prime and Netflix.
The Dish TV app will be used “as a tool for our existing subscriber so that they don’t kind of look here and there, they have everything available with their Dish TV brand on their platform,” Dua said.
“We have made substantial progress, we plan to launch it in this quarter,” he said. “Our Beta phase is starting and we will be also getting into quick national launch soon after, so it is pretty much at the launch stage at the moment.”
