Dish TV’s VZY aims for 3–5% Smart TV market share, OS rollout in pipeline

Arpora, Goa: In today’s race for tapping into the content appetite of the world’s most populated nation, Dish TV is gradually trading rooftops for living rooms. India’s oldest DTH operator is reinventing itself as a television brand with VZY, a range of smart TVs that fuse live channels and OTT applications into one single bundle. 

For a company that once prided itself on planting dishes across India’s skyline, the VZY range of smart televisions is not just a product launch. It is Dish TV’s most audacious attempt to pivot from a regulated DTH operator into what it calls a 360-degree entertainment universe. 

According to Manoj Dobhal, CEO, Dish TV, the new business line is expected to contribute more than 10% of the company’s total revenue in its very first year. “We are easily looking at this business contributing more than 10% of our revenue in a year. That is the kind of potential it has,” said Dobhal in an exclusive conversation with BestMediaInfo.com.  

Parallely, the company is also racing to gain more control over the ecosystem. Today, VZY televisions run on Google TV (Android 14). But Dobhal has set a timeline of a year for building more ownership into the operating system. 

“OS is very much on our radar already. While the conventional timeline is two years. But living to our own efficiency and agility, I am sure we will cut it by at least half,” he commented.  

Slice of the smart TV pie

Speaking about the market share targets, Sukhpreet Singh, Chief Revenue Officer, Dish TV, believes that VZY can capture 3-5% of India’s smart TV market in the near term. The mantra for success for Dish TV is simple: win households first, monetise later. 

The 55-inch VZY model comes in at roughly Rs 42,990. What makes it more than just another screen in a crowded marketplace is the one-year bundle: no extra spend on Dish TV channels or OTT subscriptions for twelve months. For Dish TV, the hook is less about the temporary freebies and more about the long-term footprint. 

Throwing light on the revenue split, Singh explained, “If I take the unit economics of a VZY TV bundled with content, most of the revenue is attributed to the hardware, since its cost is higher than the cost of the content.”

He further elaborated, saying, “For example, if a 55-inch TV is sold for around Rs 40,000, about Rs 10,000 of that value is content. However, the actual cost to us for that content is less than Rs 10,000, while hardware margins are relatively lower. So overall, a larger share of revenue comes from hardware, with some portion attributed to content.”

The tax tailwind

Timing, as they say, is everything. Just as Dish TV entered the connected TV space, GST reforms made such devices cheaper. Dobhal called it “a cherry on the top.”

With the GST Council’s rate reset kicking in on September 22 and TVs above 32 inches moving to 18% GST (earlier 28%), the premium end of the market gets a price breather just as Dish TV debuts 32-inch HD to 55-inch 4K UHD QLED VZY models. 

“It will definitely give us more wings. Average TV units per household are going to increase. Linear TVs are going to phase out and give rise to the smart TV population,” he told BestMediaInfo.com. In a country still dominated by single-TV homes, he sees a growth wave lasting four to five years.

Advertising down the road

Guiding through the roadmap, Singh mentioned that advertising, though central to most global smart TV businesses, is not Dish TV’s immediate focus with VZY. “We are not immediately positioning VZY as an advertising platform. That step will come once we achieve significant reach,” he said. 

At present, VZY operates on the Google TV system, which gives users access to Google’s data and features but limits Dish TV’s direct control. Over the next phase, Singh explained, the company plans to introduce more customisations into the user experience. Those changes will allow VZY to deliver personalised advertising, creating a new revenue stream once the customer base is large enough. 

“Once that happens, ad sales will become a stronger part of our business model. For now, advertising will not be a major revenue driver,” he said, stressing that over the next few months the priority will remain on distribution and market penetration rather than ad sales

Dish TV is working vehemently to come up with its own operating system. With partnerships like that with Cloud TV, the company is aiming at consumers at all levels. The ambition is clear: gain more ownership of the consumer experience and the data trails that come with it. 

Not just panels

Dobhal insists Dish TV is not competing on hardware alone. “TV is all about content consumption. Nobody has that capability better than us. What we are bringing out is not about hardware anymore. It is about content of choice, content of technology, and a great service promise,” he said. 

Singh echoed the sentiment. “Our objective is to look at all avenues to distribute the content. Content is still at the centre. Hardware is not at the centre. We are pivoting towards making all kinds of platforms and owning all kinds of platforms which can disseminate content,” he said.

That positioning is critical in a market where Samsung, Xiaomi, OnePlus and now Jio are already fighting ferociously on specs and prices. Dish TV’s pitch is to be the gateway for content partners into Indian homes, rather than just another screen on the shop floor.

 In after-sales service, Dish TV believes it has a moat. The company promises installations within 24 to 48 hours across 20,000 pin codes and 800 owned centres.

“Nobody covers this country better than us. In service and sales, and logistics, even at the village level, we have been maintaining and servicing customers for more than 23 years now. I can safely bet there is no TV brand or DTH brand that can service the remotest of locations in India at a better efficiency than what we do,” claimed Dobhal. 

Offsetting declines

Dish TV does not hide the fact that VZY is meant to offset the decline in traditional DTH. 

Responding to the question of whether VZY is part of the plan to offset the decline in revenues of the traditional DTH business, Singh said, “Yes, of course. That is why we are looking at several new revenue streams. We want to strengthen our topline, operating margins, and EBITDA. New businesses will contribute to this growth, although they take time to reach scale. We have a plan for how these businesses will grow, when the curve will accelerate, and how quickly we can make that happen.” 

Dobhal framed it as a shift in wind direction. “Being a linear player, we tried to minimise the damage all these years. Now those headwinds are turning into tailwinds for us. We have got a suite of solutions now for all kinds of customers,” he said

From rooftops to living rooms

For two decades, Dish TV’s growth was measured by the number of dishes it planted on rooftops. With VZY, it wants to measure itself by the number of living rooms it lights up.

The irony is rich. A company once burdened by linear TV regulation now finds freedom in a connected TV market where rules are far looser. Whether Dish TV can carve out real share against deep-pocketed competitors remains to be seen. 

But its intent is clear. As Dobhal put it, “We are going to expand into a conglomerate which addresses various facets of consuming entertainment at every household and individual level.”

The rooftop wars may be over, but the pixel wars have just begun.