The differentiators for Tata Sky have always been its advanced, world class technology, professional and efficient customer service and the flexibility and choice given to its subscribers. Our current subscriber base is over 4.5 million connections. Tata Sky has been the first DTH company across the globe to launch innovative, customized interactive services. All the interactive services are unique in nature and are designed around every member of the family. From a three-year-old to a 70 year old, there is something for everyone on Tata Sky.

Education services for the young, cooking recipes-on-demand and 24x7 Darshan on TV have been firsts in the Indian market. The latest being the launch of Actve English initiated with the intention to teach and improve the English communications skills of Indian housewives. The content for this service is provided by the British Council. Active English help housewives to develop their English conversational skills, pronunciations and vocabulary all at a press of a button. However, the benefits of this service are the luxury of viewing it at home, privacy to the learner and the convenience of learning at any time of the day.

Since we launched interactivity on our platform in 2006, we have found that it has become a key differentiator, and is now the core proposition. A nation-wide GFK Mode survey indicates that out of 180 minutes of TV viewing per day in a Tata Sky household, 34 minutes are spent on Tata Sky interactive services. Moreover, Tata Sky is also the very first to launch the programming guide in Hindi. With this new programming guide, Tata Sky subscribers can choose to view and navigate through their 4-day TV listings in English or Hindi, at the press of a button.

Showcase is a pay-per-view interactive movies service, which offer viewers access to the most recently launched Hollywood, Bollywood and regional blockbusters in the comfort of their own homes. All movies will be in DVD quality picture and CD quality sound. And, just like the cinema, movies will be shown without any ad breaks.

Significantly, Tata Sky has always placed great emphasis on its customer service. This has proved to be a crucial differentiator versus competitors both in cable and DTH. The customers of Tata Sky have expressed great satisfaction and are happy with the service they have received from day one. We have tried to become the gold standard for customer service and have been rated best-in-class globally (durables and telecom industries) with the best customer satisfaction scores (eQ Score=88 according to the A.C. Nielsen study) in independent studies. With a rapidly growing customer base this is an area we have to continue to work on to maintain our high standards.

On the most popular applications on the DTH platform

Tata Sky has been the first DTH company across the globe to launch interactive services that cater to the interests of all age groups. Currently, we have ten interactive services viz. Actve English, Actve Mall, Actve Wizkids, Actve Stories, Actve Learning, Actve Games, Actve Darshan, Actve Cooking, Actve Star News and Showcase.

Among the younger generation the Actve Wizkids service is the most popular. Extensive product research conducted on a nationwide sample across Tata Sky households, where results indicated that on an average, a child spends 66 minutes on weekdays and 86 minutes on weekends on the Actve Wizkids application.