Shah Rukh Khan’s endorsements and a freebie scheme of set-top boxes spurred a 116% rise in Dish TV’s revenues for the financial year 2007-08.
Will raise Rs 1,100 crore via rights issue
MUMBAI: Shah Rukh Khan’s endorsements and a freebie scheme of set-top boxes spurred a 116% rise in Dish TV’s revenues for the financial year 2007-08.
Revenues of the direct-to-home (DTH) services player shot up to Rs 416.1 crore in the financial year ended March 31 from Rs 192.6 crore in fiscal year 2006-07. Its quarterly revenues rose 21% to Rs 136.4 crore from Rs 112.7 crore in the previous quarter.
Dish TV added 2,85,000 customers in the fourth quarter, taking the total number of its subscribers to more than three million.
The company’s board has also decided to raise Rs 1,100 crore through a rights issue.
In a bid to retain its leadership in the market, Dish TV is planning to offer value-added services to its customers. The company currently has a market share of 60%.
Subhash Chandra, chairman, Dish TV Ltd, in a teleconference with analysts said, “We will be introducing VAS (value-added services) in a meaningful way soon. We will first launch a games portal, which would be a paid service.”
Dish TV expects the bandwidth charges to contribute significantly to its revenues from the current financial year. DTH players charge bandwidth or carriage fees because there are just too many channels and limited bandwidth capacity. To provide exposure to 2-3 million subscribers at the same time and to help finance the infrastructural costs, carriage fees becomes an important aspect for these companies.
About the industry buzz of the rollout of conditional access system (CAS) being deferred till next year, Chandra said, “If CAS doesn’t happen right now, it will be good for our business. Had CAS become compulsory, consumers might have just shifted to digital cable boxes rather than Dish TV,” Chandra said.
Dish TV will be launching its own satellite by the end of this month. The aim is to gain more flexibility for planning capacity expansion.
DTH feels its performance will improve in the financial year 2008-2009 as Trai has lowered the licence fees for DTH players.
s_tanvi@dnaindia.net
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