Sun Direct plans to woo eastern viewers

The direct-to-home (DTH) television service promoted by Chennai-based Sun TV Network Ltd founder Kalanidhi Maran’s Sun Direct TV, will spend close to Rs 7 crore for its marketing and promotions in eastern India. Pan-India, the company would spend Rs 150 crore for marketing.

The company is also targeting close to 40 per cent market share in DTH space in Bengal alone by the end of this fiscal.

According to Tony D’Silva, COO of the company, "We have introduced a lot of affordable packages after extensively studying consumer viewing preferences. So our packages have been so designed that there is something for everyone to pick."

The company is also planning to introduce some of its value-added-services (VAS) in Bengal next year.

"We are already offering VAS in South India, like radio channels, games, recording, movie-on-demand, and others. These we also intend to introduce in Bengal after we have established our DTH market in the state," D’Silva added.

According to D’Silva, worldwide VAS makes up close to 15 per cent of a DTH company’s revenues. However, in India, contribution from VAS could be in the range of 25-30 per cent to a DTH company’s overall revenues because India has several languages and the same services could be availed in more than one language, thus pushing up revenues.

The DTH war in Kolkata is already fierce between Dish TV, Tata Sky, Big TV and Airtel Digital TV. As per TRAI, there are 78 million consumers receiving cable TV services in non-CAS areas, being served by about 60,000 cable operators.

While DishTV claims to have 53 per cent of the market share of the total DTH subscribers, Big TV aims to capture 40 per cent of DTH market by 2011. The DTH space in India is expected to grow to to 40 million subscribers by 2015.

Sun Direct services are currently available in Tamil Nadu, Kerala, Karnataka, Andhra Pradesh, Gujarat, Punjab, Haryana, Delhi and the NCR. The services will be available in rest of the states from December 8. Sun Direct claims to have currently attained a subscriber base of 1.9 million, and intends to reach a subscriber base of 3 million pan-India by March 2009.