DTH Services and “Market Research”: Brief profiling of the Cable Industry in India

India is a country having 22 officially recognized languages. People speaking all these different languages are spread across the length and breadth of the country. For the survival of all these players in this sector where the customer is the king, a fair deal of “Market Research” is needed.

Television is a huge industry with thousands of programs. It is remarkable to know that almost half of all Indian households own a television which is astonishing given that 77 % of the population earns less than Rs.20/-per day. .

The first telecast was made by the state owned “Doordarshan” on 15th September 1959 in New Delhi. India has come a long way from the good old days of transmission for limited number or hours to a houseful of Indian homes. After 1991 the television industry too went through major transition, thanks to the economic and social reforms undertaken by the Narasimha Rao government. This gave rise to foreign channels like CNN, Star TV and domestic channels such as Zee TV and Sun TV which started broadcasting in India.

Presently TV covers more than 70 million homes and there are more than 200 channels to view and is the number source of entertainment in our country.

Initially in early 1990s it used be the small business setups who would provide cable to houses that would enable viewership of all channels. That also has seen a change in the recent years. Now if you look around Indian cities, towns and villages you will find mini dishes just about everywhere. These are the DTH or Direct to Home TV receivers. These DTH receivers have been eating into the market share of the cable operators. One of the main reasons for this surge in dishes across India is the cost benefit and very good client servicing.

These low costs are mainly due to the increasing competition in the DTH market. Originally when DTH was introduced there
wasn’t any big competition in the market. Two major players

that ruled the DTH market in India were “Dish TV” and “Tata Sky”. But today there are more and more players in the sector. Sun Direct, Big TV from the Reliance group, Airtel DTH are a few to mention. Airtel had created waves in the mobile and broadband sector but could not penetrate that much into

the television sets of India. It is Sun Direct that is cruising fast through its competition. Next in the line is Videocon's DTH service (Brand name 'Videocon D2H'), is lined up to be launched within F/Y 2008-2009.

DTH providers have to come up with innovative pricing schemes and packages for their customers. This is mainly done by keeping TRP’s and other television ratings as the main premise of “Market Research”. SRPL conducted primary research to understand the phenomena. We found that, they also keep records of daily trends which help them in coming out with more economical and entertaining packages for various kinds of household setups. By setups we mean houses with occupants belonging to different ages and from various demographic backgrounds.

In this respect Sun TV has revolutionized the pricing schemes. For instance Sun Direct DTH is charging only Rs. 75 for the

basic channel package which will satisfy most of the customers where as cable operators charge Rs. 150 to Rs. 200. This is especially satisfying for the customers from south India. Most of these DTH operators offer a variety of channel packages. These packages offer variety of channels

at a lower price compared to the price when they are taken individually.

In addition to this DTH operators are coming up with add on services like for instance the latest one from “Tata Sky” that offers a viewer the power to plan and control his TV viewing experience with features such as Record Live TV and Pause & Rewind Live TV.