“2019 will be remembered for the huge disruption by TRAI’s new tariff order”, says Tata Sky MD & CEO, Harit Nagpal on CNBC TV18.
Tata Sky DTH, launched in 2006 has 18 million connections across India. It’s the DTH service that introduced the LIVE TV pause and recording feature way before its time in the market.
In a recent interview with CNBC TV18’s Anuradha Sengupta, Harit Nagpal, MD & CEO, Tata Sky spoke about growth opportunities. Harit Nagpal mentioned, “We need to define a pyramid where the richest live on the top and the bottom is the economical poorer and the bottom 100 million homes don’t have an television- an opportunity, that’s first next is 35 million homes don’t subscribe to Pay TV –an opportunity and now the remaining 120 -130 million divided half and a half between DTH and cable- and opportunity”.
With the regime of New Tariff Order, Nagpal said, “a customer has to make a choice and in India television is a family product and not and individual’s preferences and any operator today needs to have an online real-time channel changing or pack changing mechanism made available to the consumer and he has to have huge investments in customer operation infrastructure so that he can support the customer through voice or data.”
“NTO was a huge disruptor as it changed the relationship with broadcasters, every customer pack had to change” says Nagpal.
Talking about the competitive scenario, Nagpal said “A platform cannot charge more than what a customer is willing to pay”
OTT services allow you to access whatever the broadcasters are offering through broadcast OTT platforms and a range of streaming services that offer the same to which Nagpal said that “Our estimate is 3 million homes paying more than Rs 600 for content and these are the ones who can afford another 1000 rupees for broadband or 3G or 4G”.
OTT wouldn’t be a challenge for Tata Sky, as they are in the business of aggregation and distribution and being into binge space with which you pay a monthly subscription to which you get access to Hotstar, Eros Now, Amazon Prime, ZEE5, Sun NXT, and more content is been added there. There are different customers who prefer watching different content on different mediums and they make it available to every one of them. On the cusp of a new decade where OTT is a new rage. Nagpal said, “DTH has the potential of reaching more than 130 million homes.”
Taking about the impact of the economic slowdown, Nagpal said, “There was no impact of slowing economy on TV consumption.”
