Page 21 - AIB | The Chanel | Issue 2 2012

THE CHANNEL | ISSUE 2 2012 | 21
would use the word
ʹleadingʹ in the sense that of
the six DTH platforms in
the market we have the
highest brand recognition,
and that we are number 1 in
terms of how many
customers we are adding on a
monthly basis – people who are
active paying subscribers . To date
we have sold 9m+ boxes.
We have a pre‐paid model so
customers pay upfront creating a
positive balance on their account
and then depending on which
packages they choose that balance
declines to zero and then they need
recharge.
In India, more people work in
the informal sector than the formal
sector. Banking has grown
tremendously but there are still
many people who donʹt have a
bank account, and certainly the use
of direct debits is fairly low. So the
majority of our customers pay us
on a monthly basis and for those
who donʹt want to recharge every
month we offer long duration packs
– for example our 12 month Mega
Pack and other semi‐annual packs.
What are your editorial priorities?
India is a very large country with
many languages, religions and
interests. One of the great
challenges is looking at those many
Indias. Core to our platform are the
big Hindi GEC channels, Bollywood
movie channels, a suite of sports
channels – because the cricket
rights are split up – leading news
and general entertainment channels
in all the major Indian languages.
Kids are incredibly important too
as India is a very young market.
Then you have people who want to
watch English movies and recent
US and UK series. We have an
international‐minded audience and
we offer international news
channels like Al Jazeera, BBC
World, Bloomberg, CNN ‐ I think it
is important that there are multiple
voices heard in the provision of news.
We do spend a lot of time
looking at the sizes of the various
states and linguistic blocs and
always try to make sure that we
have the leading regional channels.
In total there are over 820 channels
licensed in India and that does
present us with a challenge because
unlike a local cable operator we are
running a national footprint and
have limited bandwidth and so we
are constantly looking at how to
present an offering that works both
regionally and on a customer
segmentation basis. Our
One of the
great
challenges
is looking
at the
many
Indias
“
FOURHOURSINSTALLED IN
Since its launch in
2006, DTH platform
Tata Sky has been
building on its
shareholders' well-
known brands and
partnered with leaders
in digital technology to
bring a state-of-the-
art satellite TV service
to India. Chief Content
and Business
Development Officer
Nicola Bamford is
relishing the challenge
of working in an
incredibly vibrant
economy where things
can and do happen
very quickly – we
asked her to put the
label 'India's leading
DTH platform' into
context
I
▼