The Hindu : Business : Tata Sky to invest Rs. 2,000 cr.

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Thursday, Aug 09, 2007
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Tata Sky to invest Rs. 2,000 cr.

Staff Reporter

— PHOTO: V. V. KRISHNAN

USER-FRIENDLY: Actress Rakshanda Khan (right), with Vikram Kaushik, Managing Director and CEO, Tata Sky, at a press conference in New Delhi on Wednesday.

NEW DELHI: The direct-to-home (DTH) service provider Tata Sky on Wednesday said it would invest Rs. 2,000 crore in infrastructure expansion to increase its share in the growing DTH market. Claiming that it crossed 10-lakh subscriber mark in the first year of its launch, the company said its subscriber base was likely to reach 80 lakh in the next five years.

Addressing a press conference here, Tata Sky Managing Director, Vikram Kaushik, said the company would be introducing new value-added services that include features in interactive TV and launch of personal video recorder (PVR) that enables users to pause live TV.

“We have already invested Rs. 1,000 crore and plans to invest Rs. 2,000 crore in the coming years to expand and strengthen our network,” Mr. Kaushik added.

Tata Sky, a joint venture of Tata group and Star, at present has 125 channels on its platform. “We plan to take the number of channels available in our network to 200, with focus on regional content,” said Mr. Kaushik.

Tata Sky is also planning to introduce a service that will allow customers to recharge their connections through SMS. It has already launched the facility through Internet and has 15,000-20,000 outlets across the country for selling such coupons.

“Tata Sky has also set up a state-of-the-art digital infrastructure, including an uplink centre in Gurgaon and opened three call centres in Hyderabad, Mohali and Pune supporting 11 languages (English, Hindi, Marathi, Gujarati, Punjabi, Malayalam, Kannada, Tamil, Telegu, Oriya and Bengali),” he said.

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