'Dish TV to be Rs 5,000 crore company in 5 yrs'

Mumbai, Apr 22: Market analysts here are bullish on the future prospects of India's first Direct to Home (DTH) satellite television service provider, the Essel group's Dish TV, and predict that it could be a Rs 5,000 crore company in five years, adding one crore subscribers in the process.

The USD 100 million block of Dish TV has been placed with 6-7 big players. Out of the USD 100 million block, about 85 per cent has been placed with Foreign Institutional Investors (FIIs). The proceeds from the sale of Rs 4 crore shares by it's promoters, will be used for expansion, whereby the company's value will appreciate by USD 10-11 per month, market researchers observed.

''This is the birth of a new industry, very much like what has happened with cellular telephony. We must remember what happened when Bharti listed for the first time and how there was skepticism, very similar to what is happening now. There are 70 million homes currently in India which are connected to cable and this number is only going to grow in the future years and probably double over the next 5-7 years,'' experts noted.

''One can imagine that at least 50-60 million homes will be connected to digital set top boxes with the rollout of conditional access into the country as you get better quality of transmission and television. Lot of these companies, which are now coming out will be large beneficiaries of this. DishTV will potentially be a 5,000 crore company in the next five years, So you are looking at companies which are going to make couple of Rs 1,000 crore of profit getting listed and this is just the first of it's kind. This is a great time and a good space to be in,''researchers added.

It may be recalled here that Dish TV India Limited (DishTV) was listed on the National Stock Exchange (NSE) and the premier Bombay Stock Exchange (BSE) on Wednesday, Apr 18 2007.

For every 100 shares of ZEE, shareholders were given 57.50 shares of Dish TV. The Company has been listed post the de-merger of the direct consumer business of Zee Entertainment Enterprises Limited, earlier known as Zee Telefilms Limited. DishTV India is promoted by the Essel Group, the parent company of the Zee Network.

Regarding the competition faced by Dish TV, Company Director Jawahar Goel had earlier told UNI exclusively, ''We enjoy the early bird advantage. We were the first to foray into the DTH segment. In a short span of time we have on our platform more than 155 national and international channels with registered 1.9 million subscribers, which is growing.'' When asked if Maharashtra Telephone Nigam Limited (MTNL)'s recent foray into Internet Protocol Television (IPTV) would make a dent into DishTV's bottomline, Mr Goel ruled out any such possibility.

''Currently, the bandwith available in the country is not upto international standards. In such a scenario, IPTV services do not stand a chance. Besides, MTNL is notorious for it's poor quality of service. Even in the future, Reliance stands a much better chance to succeed in that segment, but for that, the Ambani group will have to first build an infrastucture at astronomical costs,'' he pointed out.

With regard to reduction in the monthly subscription rates, Mr Goel said, ''DTH is a premium service. One has to pay for quality.

Currently, we are offering subsidies which will take us another 18 months to break even. We entertain our viewers with 155 television and audio channels offering a superior picture and sound quality.

With the complete Zee bouquet of channels, the One Alliance bouquet and the Star bouquet, we offer a complete range of channels to our subscribers. Besides we also offer exclusive international channels such as Boomerang, TCM, Trace TV. The service is bound to cost something. However, as competition heats up, prices might fall.''

UNI