The India Story

As ADI Media participates in BroadcastAsia 2016, Singapore, with the June 2016 edition of Broadcast & CableSat, it becomes imperative to tell the India story and chart the road ahead.

India has a large broadcasting and distribution sector, comprising 847 television channels, 655 registered MSOs, 7 DTH operators, 2 HITS operators, and several IPTV service providers. The Indian media and entertainment (M&E) sector, estimated at Rs. 1157 billion in 2015, is likely to grow at a CAGR of 14.3 percent to reach Rs. 2260 billion by 2020.

A complete transformation is underway with a host of changes gaining traction.

FM Phase-III expansion is taking place with government allocating frequencies to winners of the first batch – 97 channels

in 54 cities. While the radio operators are setting up new stations and expanding their reach in Phase-III cities, vendors are gearing up to pitch to these broadcasters to get a major share in FM radio market pie that is expected to grow to Rs. 39.6 billion by 2019.

With cable digitization scheduled to be completed by December 2017, the country is poised for 90 million digital cable subscribers by 2020.

DTH operators continue to have a healthy revenue growth on the back of ARPUs and subscriber additions. The sector is likely to generate revenue of Rs. 260 billion by 2018 and the subscriber base is likely to increase to 79 million by 2020.

The recently launched HITS platform, NXT Digital, provides consumers access to over 500 television channels – international, national, regional, and local – besides a host of other services like e-applications and TV Everywhere.

The Rs. 585-billion pay-TV industry, a huge marketplace for online video content, caters to 70 million households subscribing to digital pay-TV service and 4.6 million households that have high-speed fixed broadband.

This new wave of change is fundamentally altering the way content is created, distributed, consumed, and monetized. Backed with appropriate regulatory and government support, international investor interest, absorption of technology innovation, and responsive stakeholders in this connected, social, digital age, the industry can only go one way, forward!