Dish TV to invest Rs 3,000 crore in its subsidiary Dish Infra Services

Essel Group's DTH arm Dish TV Tuesday said it will invest around Rs 3,000 crore in its wholly-owned subsidiary Dish Infra Services through a right issue.

The board of the company in its meeting held on Tuesday "approved an investment to the tune of Rs 3,000 crore in the company's wholly-owned subsidiary viz Dish Infra Services Pvt Ltd", Dish TV said in a regulatory filing.

According to the company, the investment would be done by subscribing 300 crore shares of face value of Rs 10 each issued by Dish Infra Services.

"Dish Infra Services is proposing right issue to the tune of Rs 3,000 crore, i.e. 300 crore equity shares of face value of Rs 10/- each at par," it said.

The investment would be done "within a period of three months", it added.

Dish Infra Services is engaged into the business of providing infrastructure and various back-end support services to DTH service providers and their subscribers along with other ancillary services.

It had a turnover of Rs 1,110.21 crore in FY2017-18.

Essel group chairman Subhash Chandra last month said his company was in a financial mess and had blamed the same for the aggressive bets on infra, which has gone out of control since the IL&FS crisis and also the acquisition of Videocon's D2H business.

Shares of Essel group companies had also tanked due to massive selling pressure, resulting in a combined erosion of Rs 13,352 crore in market valuation.

Apologising to lenders, Chandra also alleged that some negative forces were out to sabotage his efforts to raise money through a strategic sale in the flagship company Zee Entertainment Enterprises.

Later, on January 27, the group had confirmed that an understanding with the lenders had been achieved. The agreement was not to declare the company a defaulter as it had admitted that it could service the debt only up to December this year.