Vikram Kaushik
Age: 59 years
Designation: Retiring as MD & CEO of Tata Sky
Education: Masters in History from St. Stephens College, Delhi
Personal Interests: Studying Mandarin Chinese and French, yoga, reading up on philosophy and spending time with the family.

There are seven DTH players today, ARPUs are low; taxation, you claim, is high for this industry. What is the way ahead for it to make profits?
On the licence fee, TDSAT [Telecom Disputes Settlement And Appellate Tribunal] has now ruled that it should be levied at adjusted gross revenues and not gross revenues, removing cost of content, hardware and taxes already paid. Similarly, TRAI has recommended that the percentage should be reduced to 6 percent from the current 10 percent, so hopefully the government will look into it and we shall have a level playing field. The second piece of taxation relief in the near future would be from the state governments. We’ve proposed to the committee handling GST that entertainment tax should be rolled into the GST as one single tax.

Another issue is whether there is room for so many DTH players. Well, if you ask me, my answer is ‘No’. I think this country can take only three. I think after having spent thousands of crores as investment in this business since the last few years, the time has now come that shareholders will begin to ask, how much longer will it take and when shall we get the returns? So that shall lead to some pricing correction and the initial serious discounting we all offered to get a foot-hold in the industry will stop. This shall also move up the ARPUs.

Do you believe consolidation in DTH industry will happen soon?
Yes, I believe it will happen, much like in the mobile phone industry, but since the players here are well entrenched, have deep pockets and king-size egos, it will take a bit longer. But at the same time, mind you, these players are very savvy and beyond a point if they think that this is just going to be a huge loss then they are not going to stay in it. That’s a fact.

What are your views on the recent regulation that states you should give a la carte choice on TV channels?
Nowhere in the word is it mandated that a consumer can ask for a 100 percent a la carte choice when you have more than 250 channels. And in India we have channels in 15 languages present in five or six genres, so imagine the number of options it multiplies into and the complexity it increases for our call centre to manage. But guess what, our regulator spends two years on the issue and eventually says this is the way it will be. So there is much irrationality in the system but in any new industry this will happen and you’ve got to learn the Indian rope trick to live with it, keep debating, keep talking to the regulator and reason it out.

When DTH came, broadcasters assumed there will be relief from the cable mafia, but it turns out DTH has its own carriage fee demand…
I think it’s a bit exaggerated. The hard fact is that DTH has brought in a completely new revenue stream for the broadcaster. Let me tell you why the DTH players are asking for carriage or content delivery fees. With the current technology we can only beam a fixed number of channels, so if there is a new channel to be launched then the broadcaster needs to either prove that it will get a substantially high rating and the consumer wants it or pay a charge to give them access to our 5.5 million premium homes in the country. It’s perfectly legitimate. And for a change we take all payments by cheque, so it’s all legal. So from the broadcaster these are crocodile tears, I’m sorry to say this. The fact of life is they have never had it so good.

You’ll retire soon, any thoughts on what will be your next step?
I think the concept of chronological retirement is archaic. That time is gone. People should productively contribute as long as they can, in a role which makes sense for everybody.

Source: Business.in.com