Cable TV, security and Indian enterprise

MOLE'S EYE VIEW

If I had any doubts about the role that muscle-power plays in the success of a cable television operation, they were dispersed when I met Vikki Choudhry.

He is the managing director of Home Cable Network, a company providing cable television services, and also the co-promoter of what many would term a synergistic business "" security services.

While he began the cable business as a part-time occupation in early 1991, with two channels, two employees and an investment of Rs 4 lakh, the income from the cable operation, which today extends to 101 channels, 60-odd employees and 80,000 viewers, is roughly the same as that from the youngerfour year old securities business "" about Rs 3 crore.

The grind in the cable business was much tougher though. He had to get on top of technology, understand cabling, optic fibre networks, amplifiers, satellite dish and even the head-end, where feed from different channels is collated and passed on to the consumer in one pipe.

Like all other operators, he was innovative, often using the telephone and electricity poles to string cable and working out "arrangements" with the authorities when they woke up to the assault of their infrastructure.

Given the way the cable service business was born, and survived, untouched and unregulated, it is hardly considered clean. That perception may soon change. The days of rival operators cutting or stealing cable and actually slugging it out, seem to be over.

The system is getting more organised as larger operators enter the fray and take the local operators under their umbrella. Choudhry is one of the few independent cable service providers with his own head-end.

The bulk of his revenue (almost 70 per cent) comes from subscriber fees. While he passes a part of this to broadcasters like Star, there is another set of broadcasters "" mostly the new news channels "" who pay him to carry their feed on the much-congested cable that he runs into homes, which has no space to add channels.

This carriage fee, "a revenue stream which opened up just a year ago and without it, we would have been making losses", comprises 25 per cent of his income. The balance comes from Internet services and advertising on the cable channel.

According to their site www.homecable.tv, the cable systems of the company have an estimated market value of Rs 25 crore. There is a plan to capitalise that. Choudhry is looking for "overseas" venture funding and is "talking to some people to raise about Rs 15-20 crore to upgrade technology, digitalisation and to acquire more networks".

Cable TV is a capital intensive business, compared to security services at least, with huge overheads, but there is a "thrill" to it which is difficult to beat, says the 35-year Choudhry who is readying to beat the onslaught of competing technologies like direct-to-home or DTH.

The alternate business of security is manpower-intensive "" he employs about 250 people today "" and has a different thrill, what with some of his boys guarding pubs at one end and scions of prominent businessmen at the other.

"Personal security has become a status symbol today....people have money to pay," he says, excited about the promise of this business. I come away wondering who it was who said that Indians are not enterprising.