Mr. Mehra: It is the confidence shown by the customers in our service that has helped us achieve the unparalleled feat of 1.5 million connections within 16 months of launch. Hence, it is more than fair that we share the benefits of this feat with them. With our hardware priced at     Rs 1499, our world-class service will now be affordable for consumers across all strata of the society. We are confident that this pricing will catapult the process of digitization across the country and will help boost the government’s efforts to digitise India by 2010 for the Commonwealth Games. In addition, to ensure that it constantly brings the latest in television entertainment to India, Tata Sky has also announced its plan to launch its high-end personal video recorder (PVR) this year. The PVR device will help subscribers pause live television, record multiple programmes and enjoy true video-on-demand. Tata Sky’s parent company, Newscorp, has already launched PVR very successfully in the UK, Italy and Australia.

Q. What are you doing to differentiate (stand out in the DTH world) from the rest? (talk about the new applications)

Mr. Mehra: Our brand equity combined with our customer loyalty and cutting edge interactive services will always help us get the market leadership position. To take our interactive services further, we are launching a range of services this month catering to all members of the family: Active Astrology, Active Cooking, Active Learning,  Active Stories, Active Darshan and  Lakhpati Kaun.  These are in addition to our current suite of services:  Active star news, Active games,  Active sports, Active wizkids and others.

Q. In January you hit 1.5 million subscribers. What are your next targets and how well are you placed to achieve them?

Mr. Mehra: We want to grow faster and quicker now that we have seen the success I believe that in the next five years we must cross the 8 million mark and I would be happier if we are close to 10 million but that is the kind of order of magnitude objective that we are sitting for ourselves. A lot of course depends on what happens in the competitive market. There are a lot of new players coming in, which causes the market to split among this larger number of players. On the other hand, the more competition there is, the faster the category grows so it will be the combination of both those things but over all let me say that I am optimistic about the growth potential of the market and the rapid conversion of the existing cable market into the DTH not to mention the markets where cable has not reached at all. Even from there, a significant shift to a technology such as a DTH will probably start.

Q. Giving market projections what percentage of the market will be DTH and of that how much will you have?

Mr. Mehra: We believe that by 2015 nearly 150 million subscribers would have pay-TV from the current 70-75 million pay-TV subscribers. Several independent agencies believe that India will have 15-30 million DTH subscribers by 2015. My estimate is that DTH market should touch 25 million subscribers by that time. In any new category a number of players usually enter as a lot of interest is generated. This happened with mobile telephony also. We entered almost two and half years after the first player ventured into the space. The initial success has attracted others. But how many will actually survive, only time will tell.

Q. How big is your distribution set up?

Mr. Mehra: Tata Sky is now available in almost 5000 towns, making its distribution network the widest offered by any DTH company in India.