DishTV eyes smaller towns for expansion

DishTv, India's pioneer and first direct-to-home (DTH) entertainment service, is on the move for massive expansion across the country with emphasis on low-population towns to further strengthen its market position.

The Essel Group-promoted company, currently enjoying a 69 per cent market share, has a subscriber base of 2. 6 million.

"We started with areas having population of 50,000 and subsequently moved to 25,000 and 10, 000, which were considered cable-dry markets. Our new focus areas are towns with 5,000 population as they are entirely new for such a service," Sonal Thind, manager (corporate communication), DishTV told Business Standard.

Thind was present in Lucknow to announce the launch of company's new service, 'Minikids TV' designed for kids.

"The company desires to up its presence from the current 4,300 towns to 5,500 towns within a year. Also, we intent to add 100,000 new customers each month along with doubling the number of dealers and distributors across the country," Thind added.

"On every 100 television connection, three have DTH connections, the 97 left is our target audience. So we have a huge market to tap in. The current number of distributors and dealers in UP, being 50 and 5,000 respectively, will be doubled soon," informed Vivek Batra, regional sales manager, Dish TV.