Videocon launches D2H+

The Videocon group's direct-to-home (DTH) venture, called D2H+, has been launched on April 27 and is aiming a 10 per cent market share in the first year. The full commercial roll-out will start from May 1, 2009. The consumer electronics company, which made an announcement of Rs 1,000 crore for the DTH venture earlier, made a soft launch of its D2H+ services in Macau in front of its 2,500 dealers, who where specially flown in there.

"In the first year, we are looking at 15 lakh subscribers and add similar number every year. The target is to have one crore subscribers in six years. We are set for a mega roll out of our DTH services with around 15,000 showrooms across the country." says Venugopal Dhoot, chairman, Videocon Group. The company will launch integrated digital televisions (iDTVs) and set top boxes (STBs) with 4-5 packages. Of the total sales, the company is planning to sell 70 per cent IDTVs and 30 per cent STBs.

"We will be offering TVs with in-built STBs, which no one in the market offers. Over 40 engineers of the group spent nearly two years in developing the TV sets with in-built STBs." Dhoot said. The D2H+ product is being launched only in district towns and not rural areas across India as launching partly would help the company understand the operations better and provide better service. The technology for STBs is imported from Korea/China and later assembled at the company's Aurangabad plant. Gradually, D2H+ will also be manufactured from other plants of Videocon. Videocon will be entering the DTH space in India in the presence of ventures like Dish TV, Doordarshan, Tata Sky, Big TV and Airtel. The company is ensuring a strong sales network and has been recruiting sales and service staff through its media arm, Bharat Business Channel.

With five million subscribers, Dish TV has the largest share of the DTH market, which stands at about 12 million (excluding DD Direct). Tata Sky has about 3.4 million subscribers; Sun Direct with over 2.3 million subscribers; Big TV with about 1.2 million subscribers and Airtel digital TV with about 0.3 million subscribers.

Courtesy - Televisionpoint.com