Oct. 28, 2009 (The Hindu Business Line) --

Director & CEO - DTH, Bharti Airtel, and his picture of DTH TV in rural Punjab



Meera Mohanty

With the advantage of its mobile network, and a brand as strong as Airtel, Airtel DTH is pursuing its place in the DTH market with great aggression. The strategy is different now says, Ajai Puri, Director & CEO - DTH, Bharti Airtel, who claims the brand is acquiring the largest number of new customers. And two out of three of them are coming from outside the top 300 cities. Puri, who has also shared pictures from his frequent travels in rural India, spoke at length on the strategy for brand.

What is your gameplan for the brand?

I have a strong belief that the industry for five years has targeted cable as competition and therefore stayed focused on the top 300-500 towns and the 70-million plus cable and satellite homes. We decided to be game-changers and target 230 million households and all those 150-160 million households that are not part of C&S because they don’t have access to it. Because I believe as mobile telephony made people buy handsets, DTH, when made available, will make people buy colour TVs. We decided that 60-70 per cent of our business will come from cable-dry places and that’s paying off. Seventy per cent of new customer acquisitions come from rural and upcountry markets, outside of the top 300 cities.

You are just back from a long journey through rural India, what’s it looking like?

Let me tell you. I saw three boys in a small village just before Nadiad in Gujarat carrying a DTH box in a bag. I asked them if they had a TV. They said no, not yet, but had Rs 5,600 for a 21-inch television that they would get next week. This is a farmer community family with two mobiles, and Rs 3,000-4,000 additional income.

What’s the driver?

The need to be entertained. Channels are also big drivers. Particularly movie channels. Unless there is a Sony (NYSE:SNE) Max in rural Haryana, they don’t want it. Go to Chandigarh and unless there is an ETC, PTC (NASDAQ:PMTC) and Chardi Kalaa, because the three showcase different gurudwaras, they won’t take your service. I think ETC shows the Golden Temple, PTC the Bangla Sahib and Chardi Kalaa shows the Sis Ganj Sahib. Rural sales in Maharashtra went up because we had IBN Lokmat which became the most poplar channel during the recent elections.

So, while marketers might scoff at a Total TV, we have decided that we would not focus only on urban India, not just on Warner Brothers or HBO, but go all out and push regional channels. So depending on your pin code, we can offer Kannada, Telugu or Tamil channels. It looks like a simple business, but it’s a deep-rooted consumer insight, segmented business. And I think channel diversity works for us.

What about carriage capacity? What’s an ideal number?

We have the advantage of being on MPEG 4 DVBH 2 technology and have seven transponders. We are also in touch with ISRO.