Tata Sky's new installations return to pre- Covid lockdown levels: CEO

Leading direct-to-home operator TataSky has recaptured its pre-COVID-19 levels in terms of installation of new connections, a top company official has said.

The company, which operates in both DTH as well as OTT segments through its bundling service Binge, said the TV viewing time has gone up after the lockdown.

According to Tata Sky managing director and CEO Harit Nagpal, DTH and OTT are going to co-exist with both of them offering unique content.

"Both have their own place as they serve mutually exclusive and unique content and one does not substitute the other," Nagpal told PTI.

On being asked as to whether the average revenue per user from the DTH business would be impacted as consumption of OTT on large screen trough smart TV is on the rise, he said: "We have not seen one platform suffering at the cost of the other".

"TV is a platform that is consumed by the whole family and there will always be someone in the household who will have something that he likes to watch on live TV, be it drama, movies, music, sports, education, news or spiritual," he said.

For the discerning customers, it has introduced Tata Sky Binge+, a smart set-top box earlier this year. It is an android enabled hybrid device that offers both linear TV as well as OTT apps on a single television screen.

"We know the pulse of our customers and thus act accordingly," he said.

The new subscriber number for Tata Sky Binge+ did take a beating during the lockdown as the device required a technician's visit.

"However, we are back to our pre-lockdown numbers, here too. Albeit the number of new DTH subscribers continues to be far in excess of the new Binge+ subscribers," he added.

Over the new installation, Nagpal said: "Our current new connection addition rate is already ahead of what it was before the lockdown. The distribution of acquisition numbers from towns and villages are proportionate to the number of households in these locations."

On being asked about investments/capex for the fiscal, he said: "We are not anticipating any reduction in capex or spends as a result of the pandemic."

According to a report by the sectoral regulator TRAI, the DTH industry has an active subscriber base of 72.44 million paying customers in the quarter ended March 31, 2020. This was in addition free DTH services of public broadcaster Doordarshan.

Tata Sky with a market share of 32.33 per cent was leading the segment followed by Dish TV with 29.49 per cent. Bharti Telemedia commands 23.65 per cent market and Sun Direct TV has 14.53 per cent share.