Sun, Direct, has, million, customers, already,, and, plans, double, it!

Sun Direct the late entrant into the DTH space has 3 million customers already. Sun Direct is 80% owned by Maran family of Chennai and 20% by Astro group of Malaysia. It competes directly with the might of Dish TV, Tata Sky and Reliance.

It also has 150 crore investment lined up to take the subscriber base to 6 million. Dish TV which is one of the early entrants has crossed 4 million subscribers only in Nov 2008. Sun Direct has done it in much lesser time with some aggressive pricing and marketing.

Sun Direct has a huge presence down south and the main reason is it understands the south market well. Sun Direct owns many of the south Indian channels which are from the Sun Network stable. It’s regional pack offers are unmatched. BigTV tried to match it with some aggressive pricing but later withdrew it when Sun Direct entered the scene. It started expanding to the rest of India too.

Sun Direct could as well be the 3rd largest DTH provider in India after Dish TV and Tata Sky. That is a pure speculation based on some guesstimate. I would support that with data a bit later.

Reliance BigTV made a splash with its marquee offers and advertisement but fizzled out when Sun Direct has entered. Airtel DTH for all its expensive ads turned out be an expensive affair overall. I am yet to hear some Airtel DTH subscription figures.

There are 11.1 million DTH subscribers at the end of 2008. These (I think - again speculation) are the top 5 DTH operators in India :

1. Dish TV
2. Tata Sky
3. Sun Direct
4. Reliance Big TV
5. Airtel DTH

There is a Doordarshan DTH which has some very good channels but its penetration in urban areas is minimal. Need to find out its rural penetration. The other DTH operators provide the Doordarshan channels on their network but the vice versa is not true.  Bharat Business Channel Ltd is the business entity which has the 6th DTH license in India.

The introduction of the new DTH player has induced a new competition and made the DTH more affordable. The monopoly of cable operators and lack of quality of service are a thing of past. Cable operators too offered set-top boxes to compete with the spate of DTH offers. But, they finally will make way or already made way to the DTH players.

PS : I am a Sun DTH subscriber and am pretty happy with the service so far.