TELEVISION: Has built a network of 10 million subscribers in eight months.
Jagjit Singh Kohli, managing director and CEO, Digicable Network India, says his 12-month-old company has become the number one player in terms of subscriber base leaving behind entrenched multi-system operators (MSOs) like Hathway owned by the Rahejas, Wire & Wireless India Ltd promoted by the Zee group and Hinduja’s InCable, among others.
MSOs supply TV channels to homes either directly or through a local cable operator (LCO).
“We have built a network of 10 million subscribers in eight months, which makes us the market leader in the cable industry,” says Kohli who, engaged Ashmore, a UK-based investment management company, as a 49 per cent equity partner in Digicable last year.
According to cable industry estimates, the combined subscriber base of the three large MSOs is about 20 million out of a universe of 78 million cable TV homes. India’s Rs 23,000-crore cable business is operated by 60,000 cable operators including 6,000 MSOs.
And among those 6,000 MSOs, Kohli claims Digicable is leading the pack with a nationwide presence. “We are everywhere except in Tamil Nadu,” says the 50-something cable industry expert and a serial entrepreneur who set up InCable, Win Cable and the broadcasting company Etc Network.
K Jayaraman, managing director & CEO of the incumbent market leader Hathway Cable & Datacom, is unruffled by the claim. “I don’t know whether he’s number one or not but Kohli is a competitor. He is hell-bent on proving himself and wants to be a serious player.”
An InCable executive refutes Digicable’s assertion: “There is no real auditing mechanism and the company is too new to prove if the acquisitions that add up the subscriber numbers have actually been made. Acquisition of existing networks means major investments.”
But money is not something Digicable is short of. Kohli is tightlipped on the figure but initial media reports suggested that Digicable would invest Rs 1,000 crore over a three-year period.
“I can assure you that we are fully funded. Do you think I would have acquired so many cable networks without money?” he asks, quashing rumours that Ashmore paid barely Rs 40 crore in the first round.
To build its network, Digicable went on a massive drive to acquire other MSOs, independent cable operators as well as LCOs. Some of the businesses were bought out while in the rest we have acquired 51 per cent (or more) stake,” informs Kohli.
The company has also laid hundreds of kilometers of its own fibre (optic fibre cables to carry television channels). Nearly 200 kms has been laid in Delhi alone. It costs between Rs 10 lakh and Rs 40 lakh (most of it is Right of Way) per km to lay underground fibre depending on the city.
That is not all. He has set up 20 new digital head-ends including the one at Digicable’s swank new office in west Delhi. (It costs between Rs 2.5 crore and Rs 7 crore to set up a digital head-end depending on the technology.)
A large photograph of the golden temple hanging behind his huge desk in the Delhi office is a reminder of another coup that Kohli staged. He got the rights to broadcast Gurbani live from the Golden Temple in Amritsar on his channel Etc Punjabi some years ago.
The channel was launched after Kohli tasted success with his Hindi music channel Etc that occupied the top slot ahead of MTV and Channel V with the hardcore Bollywood music it aired.
A self-confessed “darling” of the media in the early 90s — when he set up Incable with the Hindujas and Win Cable for the Rahejas — he now shuns it with a degree of vengeance. “He is very private and dislikes public platforms,” says his cable industry friend who does not wish to be identified.
Yet others say that he withdrew from the limelight after his business partner Ram Punjabi’s murder in Mumbai 10 years ago. However, he continued launching businesses with the remaining two partners Yogesh Shah and Yogesh Radhakrishnan.
A pucca Mumbaiwalla, Kohli, an engineer by qualification, comes from an established business family – the manufacturers of spring leaves, a motor spare part. But cable was his calling and he set up a small cable network in his neighbourhood way back in the mid 80s. “This was before satellite TV in India. I got 16 subscribers and was in business.”
Encore, his cable company telecast latest Hindi films and English serials like Dallas and Dynasty on his cable network. “Five such cable networks started in Mumbai around the same time. Among them was one by Ronnie Screwvala (who now runs the UTV empire) and Siddhartha Srivastava who launched India’s first satellite channel ATN,” says Kohli.
When Eros, the company that had film rights for video cassette recorders, sued the cable operators for illegal telecast of Hindi films, it was Kohli who devised a way out. He started Cable Master which sourced films legally from video cassette makers such as Times, Eros and Indus, among others. “People think that the Gulf war popularised cable TV. I would say that the credit should go to Cable Master,” he says.
Kohli is not pleased with the serial entrepreneur tag. “The only business I set up on my own (other than Digicable) was Etc Networks,” he says.
The first serious cable business was supposed to have been a JV with the Hindujas. “It did not eventually work out that way. The story is known. The MoU was not honoured and we ended up in the court,” says Kohli.
Soon he jumped ship and signed a management agreement with the Rahejas to set up their cable network Win cable, now known as Hathway. At almost the same time he set up Etc Network which he sold to the Zee group some years ago.
Clearly, Kohli is both restless and reticent. The latter reflects in the way he’s keeping his plans for TV channels in UP — said to be for the chief minister — under wraps. His restlessness shows in the way he flits from one business to another.
He may have sold off Etc but launched PTC — a news channel in Punjab a year and a half ago. “As of today, it is owned by me. I cannot comment on the future,” he says.
