Tata Sky, India’s leading Direct-To-Home (DTH) service provider aims to reach 4,500 towns in Karnataka, a top executive said on Saturday.

Talking to Deccan Herald, Tata Sky Chief Sales Officer Saleem Shaikh said, “Karnataka is one of the important markets for us. We are present in 2,500 towns covering over 80 per cent of the population and we aim to reach 4,500 towns by end of this fiscal.”

Tata Sky currently has 10,000 dealer outlets through local shops across 2,500 towns and villages in the state. The company has a market share of 40 per cent in rural areas and 25 per cent in urban areas, to add up to an overall 30 per cent in Karnataka.

How difficult is to achieve this target? Shaikh said, “It is extremely difficult in penetrating rural market as we don’t have dealers. We are identifying people into repair workshops for fridge and TV, and giving them training to make them part of our dealer network.”

He further said the objective of the company is to ensure that “every pin code and village should have Tata Sky dealers". In urban areas we wish to have multiple dealers and in rural areas at least one, he said. Tata Sky currently has 13 call centres in 13 locations catering to multiple languages in the country.

The total digitised market size in India is 120 million as of 2014 with 50 million DTH set top boxes (STB), with the remaining 70 million STBs installed by MSOs (Multi System Operators). DTH as a sector today is growing at an average of 11-12 per cent while Tata Sky claims to be the leader as the fastest growing DTH brand over the last 2-3 years.

As per the survey, there are 170 million digital households in India, out of which Tata Sky has a customer base of 14.5 million with a market share of 19-20 per cent. It has presence in six lakh villages supported by 2,10,000 dealers in the country. “One in every three customers opt for DTH in India is a Tata Sky subscriber,” Shaikh claimed. 

Tata Sky has roped in Kannada actor Sudeep to promote My 99 (Nanna 99) pack which allows customers to get varied regional channels at a reasonable cost along with a base pack of only Rs 99. The company claimed Nanna 99 powered a jump of over 40 per cent in subscriber growth in Karnataka.

Advantage digitisation

The deadline for digitisation of Phase-III is December this year, with focus on South India, covering 1,200 towns. “Tata Sky sees big opportunities in helping the cause of digitisation in the southern market and further consolidates the market position. At present, the service brings in 95 per cent of channels to home subscribers,” Shaikh said.

When asked about the competition coming from Sun TV down south, Shaikh said, the company’s focus is more on converting viewers from analogue to DTH rather than converting them from Sun TV to Tata Sky. “The moment we do that, naturally, the customer comes to us.” He further said that the company has stopped looking at competition in DTH two years back.