The pay-TV subscriber base is shrinking. Direct-to-home (DTH) service provider Dish TV's share is also going through a patch. And then there is the long- standing tussle between the promoter family and their largest shareholders.
Company's Chief Executive Officer (CEO) Manoj Dobhal doesn't seem to be bogged down by these challenges as he is dialling up a digital strategy by planning to launch a marketplace for entertainment services, adding live-streaming to its recently launched creator-curated content platform Fliqs, which is part of Dish TV's OTT aggregation service Watcho.
Profitable OTT
Although Watcho is still not contributing in double digits to Dish TV's revenue, the CEO is betting big on the service and its expansion.
"We (Watcho) have grown three times as compared to a year back. It is a year of reckoning for Watcho from a revenue perspective. It will become a sizable business and will add value to the brand. Three quarters from now or a year from now, Watcho will become the first profitable OTT platform in India," he told Moneycontrol.
Dialling up digital
One of the plans is to expand Fliqs services, a platform which was launched earlier this month.
Fliqs, in which any professional storyteller can upload content, will soon see a marketplace where all services -- from dubbing to trailer-cutting -- will be available to creators.
"In the days to come, most services needed for any professional storytelling will come into one platform, which will be an extension to Fliqs. Creators need services like subtitling, dubbing, moderation, trailer- cutting, synopsis, metadata generation. We will offer all those service providers under one marketplace," Veerender Kumar Gupta, Chief Business & Technology Officer, told Moneycontrol.
He hopes the service will roll out in FY26. "We are looking at AI-based dubbing, which is in the works, with content in various languages. A creator making Tamil content can dub the content in any language. This will be a separate tool and will be available on Fliqs. We will use it to convert content and also make it available to creators," he added.
In addition, Dobhal is planning to add live-streaming to Fliqs's content offering. "We see ourselves getting into live-streaming of roadshows, and music concerts to make it an ultimate destination with podcasts, music, etc. We want Dish TV and Watcho to be a complete digital entertainment destination," he said.
Plugging leakage
His idea is to plug the leakage of subscribers by offering different digital-led content.
"Indian families are in the hybrid era. In a typical Indian household, even in an upscale urban one, you don’t see people switching off TV. TV is still the centre stage of any living room. The same customer is also watching OTT, Web, and mobile. So, all kinds of viewing is there in the family. We are placed on the linear TV side as well as on OTT for GenZ (people born between 1996 and 2010) and millennials (people born between the early 1980s and the late 1990s) and then there is also a platform for creators," Dobhal said.
He says Fliqs is a launch pad for professional storytellers.
"On Fliqs, creators can set up their channel, upload content and price it on a pay-per-view model. It can be rental, or SVOD (subscription-based video on demand). They can keep content for free too. After registration, Fliqs will become the creators' own OTT app. There is a revenue-share between creators and us. For a base level, it is 80-20, with 20 percent of the revenue coming from content going to Fliqs," said Sukhpreet Singh, Corporate Head, Marketing.
There is a lot of content that is getting produced in the country which is not seeing the light of day and not meeting the audience, noted Dobhal.
"Creators are good at making masterpieces but do not have the wherewithal to reach an audience. This requires a lot of investment. With Fliqs, we want to plug that leakage of any unique content not available anywhere else and that will compel customers to stay on our platform. Through Fliqs, creators can publish and monetise content. There are 40 million creditable creators who have built a strong reputation. Otherwise, there are more than 90 million creators. They can give a boost to a great economy but monetisation and publishing avenues are limited," the CEO added.
Uncertainty looms
While the digital segment shows a lot of potential, the future of pay TV remains uncertain.
DTH users, at 59.91 million, dropped by 2.26 million in the quarter ending September 2024 from the 62.17 million in the previous quarter in the same year.
Dish TV's share dropped to 19.53 percent in the July-September period in 2024 from 19.98 percent in the April-June quarter in the same year. In the July-September quarter 2024, the share of other players, including Tata Play, was at 31.99 percent, followed by Bharti Telemedia at 29.38 percent, and Sun Direct TV at 19.10 percent.
Dobhal expects the digital segment to fix the gap.
"The engagement base (for pay TV) has not come down. It is just that, at some point, the consumer is dominated by one technology and then they go back to TV again. It is not that customers have thrown out the TV or the set-top box; it is just that viewing hours have come down. When we build a 360 degree ecosystem, you get the consumer hooked on with a library that is across mediums, so that the revenue remains locked in with one brand. We have more than 20 million user base across Dish TV and Watcho."
TV segment revenues fell 4.5 percent in 2024, for the second year in a row after a 2 percent fall in 2023, according to a FICCI-EY report launched in March 2025. TV subscription revenue fell 3 percent on the back of a 6 percent reduction in Pay TV households, a loss of 6 million paying subscribers to 111 million, despite an increase in ARPU (average revenue per user) to Rs 281.
The cumulative reach of television also saw a marginal drop to 753 million people each week, compared to 758 million per week, in 2023. On the other hand, the average time spent per day increased slightly to reach three hours and 42 minutes a day.
It is expected that total TV subscriptions will grow to 214 million by 2030 at 1 percent CAGR (Compound Annual Growth Rate) in India, with three large and important segments – Pay TV, Free TV and Connected TV -- and broadcasters will need to cater to them all.
Boardroom battle
Along with navigating the changing TV landscape, Dobhal is steering the company amid board-level challenges with shareholders of JC Flowers that acquired Yes Bank’s 24.19 percent stake in Dish TV in December 2022, warranting a reconstitution of the board.
In the last three years, Dish TV shareholders have rejected appointments of board members, leading to the ouster of 25 directors. Dish TV shareholders own 96 percent share in the company as against 4.04 percent owned by promoter Jawahar Goel, the younger brother of Essel group chairman Subhash Chandra.
Dobhal said the boardroom battle is not affecting day-to-day operations.
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