DishTV India Ltd. (stylised as dishtv) is an Indian subscription based

satellite television Satellite television is a service that delivers television programming to viewers by relaying it from a communications satellite orbiting the Earth directly to the viewer's location.ITU Radio Regulations, Section IV. Radio Stations and Systems ...

provider based in

Noida Noida (), short for New Okhla Industrial Development Authority (ISO: ), is a city located in Gautam Buddha Nagar district of the Indian state of Uttar Pradesh. As per provisional reports of Census of India, the population of Noida in 2011 was ...

. DishTV was launched by the Zee Group on 2 October 2003. It ranked #437 and #5 on the list of media companies in Fortune India 500 roster of India's largest corporations in 2011. Dish TV was also voted India's most trusted DTH brand according to the Brand Trust Report 2014, a study conducted by Trust Research Advisory. On 22 March 2018, Dish TV completed a merger with Videocon d2h, creating the largest DTH provider in India at the time of merger.

History

DishTV launched the first DTH service in India on 2 October 2003. The company decided not to compete against entrenched cable operators in metros and urban areas, and instead focused on providing services to rural areas and regions not serviced by cable television. Jawahar Goel, who led the launch, recalled 10 years later, "We hardly had four

transponders In telecommunications, a transponder is a device that, upon receiving a signal, emits a different signal in response. The term is a blend of ''transmitter'' and ''responder''. In air navigation or radio frequency identification, a flight trans ...

and could offer only 48 channels, compared to analog cable that was giving 60 and was much cheaper. And,

Star A star is a luminous spheroid of plasma (physics), plasma held together by Self-gravitation, self-gravity. The List of nearest stars and brown dwarfs, nearest star to Earth is the Sun. Many other stars are visible to the naked eye at night sk ...

refused to give its channels. So, we decided to go slow and concentrate in cable-dry and cable-frustrated markets, rather than cable-rich markets and build the market step by step." Dish TV acquired 350,000 subscribers within 2 years of the launch. Following bitter legal proceedings between Star and Zee, in 2007, the two companies called a truce and began offering their channels on each other's services. This decision and Dish TV's acquisition of more transponders enabled them to offer 150 channels on their service, more than any other DTH service in India at the time.

Merger with Videocon d2h

On 11 November 2016, the Board of Directors of Dish TV and Videocon d2h agreed to an all-stock merger of their DTH operations. The merger was approved by the Competition Commission of India (CCI) on 10 May 2017, and by the National Company Law Tribunal on 27 July 2017. The merger faced uncertainty in January 2018, when Dish TV announced that it was re-evaluating the merger after some of the Videocon Group's lenders petitioned the National Company Law Tribunal to open insolvency proceedings against the company. In February 2018, Dish TV announced that it intended to go through with the merger. d2h had a market share of 19% among the pay DTH operators. The amalgamation was officially completed on 22 March 2018. The merger made the new combined entity the largest DTH provider in India with 17.7 million active subscribers. Dish TV and Videocon d2h reported separate revenue numbers in FY2017. The combined total revenue of the two firms was . The company retained the name of DishTV India Limited after the merger.

Fall of promoters' shareholding

In May 2021, it was disclosed that promoters' shareholding in Dish TV has fallen to just 5.67%. It was also told that Yes Bank has become largest shareholder of the company.

Zing Digital

Zing Digital is a subsidiary of Dish TV India launched in January 2015 to provide access to South India's regional channel. The service currently operates in

Kerala Kerala ( , ) is a States and union territories of India, state on the Malabar Coast of India. It was formed on 1 November 1956, following the passage of the States Reorganisation Act, by combining Malayalam-speaking regions of the erstwhile ...

West Bengal West Bengal (; Bengali language, Bengali: , , abbr. WB) is a States and union territories of India, state in the East India, eastern portion of India. It is situated along the Bay of Bengal, along with a population of over 91 million inhabi ...

and

Odisha Odisha (), formerly Orissa (List of renamed places in India, the official name until 2011), is a States and union territories of India, state located in East India, Eastern India. It is the List of states and union territories of India by ar ...

References

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