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Tag: Piyush Pankaj

  • GTPL Hathway aims high with headend-in-the-sky launch in FY26

    GTPL Hathway aims high with headend-in-the-sky launch in FY26

    MUMBAI: Two companies have tried to deliver TV signals via this mode. One of them- Jain headend in the sky (Hits)  was too early – and had to be put to rest. The second -Nxt Digital from the Hinduja group – has only been able to take it a certain distance.  Now a third player is getting into the Hits game: the  Anirudhsinh Jadeja-headed  cable TV and broadband MSO GTPL Hathway.

    Speaking at the investor call after the declaration of its third quarter FY25  financials last week, GTPL Hathway business head B2B &  chief strategy officer Piyush Pankaj  admitted this while responding to a question from an analyst.

    Said he: “..we  are going to change the delivery technology which we are going on. I will talk about that in Q4, much in the Q4 as we are changing it from the fiber to satellite which we are doing right now going on to the Hits, but I will talk about the Hits in the next quarter and how it is going to give us the company the access to all over India, what are going to be main targets on that, how we are going to increase our subscriber base, how it is going to affect our costing and what the positive impact is going to happen on that. That is what we are going to give you in Q4. We are trying to launch that in FY26 this Hits and it is going to be very positive for the company.”

    Pankaj added that government clearances from some of its departments are pending  and the company was in the process of fulfilling  some of the licence obligations from the ministry of information and broadcasting.

    The company has already taken loans for the Hits project  and it is almost 80 per cent complete on the capex side, Pankaj  revealed. “We are just looking forward that by next quarter the whole project will be completed and we will be ready to launch,” he said. 

    Going by the fact that it has emerged as the largest active subscriber cable TV company  in the country, it is in the realms of possibility that its Hits project could well go on to be a major hit with customers. 

  • GTPL Hathway to maintain FY22 revenue and EBIDTA growth in FY23

    GTPL Hathway to maintain FY22 revenue and EBIDTA growth in FY23

    Mumbai: GTPL Hathway saw 12 per cent growth in revenues at Rs 24,154 million and four per cent increase in EBITDA (earnings before interest, tax, depreciation and amortisation) to Rs 5,677 million year-on-year in FY22. The company expects to maintain this growth rate for the current financial year i.e., FY23.

    “The guidance is just that we are going to maintain our  compound annual growth rate (CAGR), 100 basis points here and there but we are going to maintain our CAGR in both revenue and EBITDA that’s the way as we look forward to our aggressive growth in both the businesses in this financial year,” said GTPL Hathway Ltd business head – CATV and chief strategy officer Piyush Pankaj during an investor call held recently.

    GTPL Hathway closed the year 2021 becoming the largest multi-system operator in the country with its cable TV (CATV) subscriber base growing to 8.40 million as per Telecom Regulatory Authority of India’s (Trai) performance indicator report. “Our CATV subscriber base has grown sharply by 2.3 times in the last six years and for FY2022 it has grown by five per cent,” observed Pankaj.

    ALSO READ | GTPL Hathway closes FY22 as largest MSO; revenue at Rs 24,154 million

    The company lost 7.5 lakh commercial customers when Covid-19 pandemic started and has seen the return of four lakh customers since then. The rate of returning customers has slowed down from 20-25 lakh in the last quarter to 20K average during the fourth quarter FY22.

    The majority of the company’s cable TV subscriptions come from the Gujarat market which has 95 per cent share with the remaining five per cent spread across markets such as Pune, Nagpur, Hyderabad, Jaipur, Patna and Varanasi.

    “Our CATV business expansion will gain momentum with organic and inorganic growth in the coming quarters,” said Pankaj. “After the new tariff order (NTO) , we said that growth will come from inorganic and organic. The first year of NTO has gone into stabilising the industry. Just as we were getting ready for acquisitions and going organic, Covid hit us in March 2020 and we were not able to do any inorganic growth. So, from this quarter onwards we have started both inorganic and organic growth.”

    The company’s capex for FY22 was Rs 363 crore which includes Rs 180 crore of CATV capex and Rs 183 crore of broadband capex. “Next year we are keeping the target of Rs 450 crore for the capex on which around Rs 180 crore is going to be cable capex and rest is going to be the broadband capex,” said Pankaj.

  • GTPL Hathway earmarks Rs 400 crore capex for FY22

    GTPL Hathway earmarks Rs 400 crore capex for FY22

    KOLKATA: Pan India multi-system operator (MSO) GTPL Hathway is increasing its capex projection for FY22 to Rs 400 crore, compared to Rs 335 crore it invested in FY21, a top executive revealed in an investors call.

    Out of the overall capex projected for this financial year, Rs 225 crore to Rs 230 crore will be invested in the broadband segment, while the rest is going to be deployed for the cable TV side, especially for expansion in new markets. All capex will be funded through internal accruals only. The company is not looking forward to any fund raising activity at this point of time, GTPL Hathway cable TV head and chief strategy officer Piyush Pankaj noted.

    Earlier, the MSO revealed its plans to grow its cable TV subscriber base by more than 50 per cent in the next three years. While the growth in FY21 was flat, the company has cited the  decline in commercial connections as reason for the sluggish addition. 

    “The hotels, corporates, housekeeping, offices, small offices and all, which have not come back totally because of the pandemic. We are looking forward that in the normal scenario this business will grow. The residential customers are growing. We have connected around half a million more residential houses in the pandemic. We are looking forward that we will continue to grow,” Pankaj commented.

    GTPL Hathway is excited about six new states it entered for potential organic growth. Moreover, there is a lot of opportunity for consolidation, Pankaj added. It is already on the verge of executing some deals. While pandemic came in the way to executing deals in FY21, it is looking at closing the consolidation deals as the situation improves going forward.

    Overall, the cable TV market has been growing from anything between four to seven per cent CAGR, mentioned GTPL Hathway chairman and non-executive director Rajan Gupta. It varies from state to state, where states like Odisha have grown higher.

    It is also optimistic about maintaining its broadband additions as well, which is around 60,000 quarterly. “If you see 31 March 2020, we were showing the ISP internet service at around Rs 5 crore, which has increased to Rs 43 crore in 2021, quarter-to-quarter it is down, but year-to-year it is ten times more,” GTPL Hathway promoter and MD Anirudhsinh Jadeja highlighted.

    Rather than increasing broadband ARPU, the current focus is to create the broadband market where it enjoys a high market share in cable like Gujarat. As upgradation happens from LAN to FTTH, there will be some ARPU increase, said  Gupta. The shift in ARPU with change in connection happened last year, and he expects the momentum to continue.

    GTPL Hathway planned to launch hybrid boxes in Q4FY21, but production has been delayed due to the pandemic. The boxes are ready and they are getting shipped, Pankaj stated.

    While Jio is adding broadband subscribers aggressively, Jadeja claims it is not a competitor yet. “It is good now that Jio is also our partner and we might say that we are getting the cost synergy benefits related to the content, infrastructure, or whatever Jio’s expertise is for the overall industry,”  remarked Jadeja.

    “Jio’s market is spread in Ahmedabad, Baroda, Surat, and some other cities in Gujarat. GTPL covers almost the majority of Gujarat with a presence in 100 towns. The major competitor is BSNL and there are no other players,” he added.

  • GTPL Hathway sees demand surge on both cable, broadband amid the lockdown

    GTPL Hathway sees demand surge on both cable, broadband amid the lockdown

    MUMBAI: As the country battles the COVID-19 crisis, a large chunk of the population is confined at home. To ease the burden of social distancing, most of the people are consuming more content, both on linear TV and online. The surge in consumption has caused higher demand for cable boxes as well as broadband connection of GTPL Hathway.

    “The demands are becoming higher actually as people are staying at home. We are recovering a number of old boxes in the cable side and there is demand for new boxes as well. However, we are seeing more surge in broadband connection and bandwidth consumption is also very high. The consumption has increased on the cable side as well,” GTPL Hathway business head – video and chief strategy officer Piyush Pankaj said.

    While there is a curfew-like lockdown, it is challenging for on-ground staff to run operations. But Pankaj mentioned that as MSOs and LCOs come under essential services, the proper documentation proving that they are, is helping them to work. He also said that they are updating police permission everywhere that the service comes under essential segments.The on-ground staff have also been given proper cards and letters to save them from any hassle. To ensure safety, they have also been given health guides, hand sanitizers, dresses covering their face and body.

    However, GTPL has also reduced the manpower working on ground, as the main requirement there is the technical staff. The workforce, which do not need to be on-ground, have been given work-from-home option. Hence, while 20 per cent of the team is working from the real location, rest of the workers perform their duties from home.

    “Till now the payment side is rolling smoothly, we are sending URLs to customers and asking them to pay and in some cases operators are also collecting on their paytm also. Sometimes operators are using the URL, using paytm to pay us; somewhere consumers are paying directly to us. Lockdown started one week ago; we have not faced any problem on the credit side till then. If any problem comes, we will update technology and adhere to that,” Pankaj added.

    GTPL has put some advertisements on COVID-19 on its own local channels. Moreover, whenever a customer calls, it is giving out messages to ensure consumer’s safety as well.

  • GTPL Hathway believes NTO 2.0 won’t affect price stability

    GTPL Hathway believes NTO 2.0 won’t affect price stability

    MUMBAI: At the very beginning of 2020, the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI) issued fresh amendments to the New Tariff Order (NTO) within less than one year of its implementation. Rattled by the sudden change, the stakeholders in the industry seem to be displeased. But in contrast, GTPL Hathway believes NTO 2.0 is an extension of NTO 1.0 and price stability in the market will continue despite the revision.

    “There is NCF for Rs 160 in the new NTO and there is NCF Rs 130 in the earlier NTO plus we could charge additional Rs 20 for every additional 25 channels, so broadly speaking, from a short-term perspective, they are more or less similar kind of thing. So, NCF has a big portion of earning. That is something which is more or less protected while one can debate on what kind of future impact it will have after three years, after five years, but from a short-term perspective that is protected,” GTPL Hathway chairman and non-executive director  Rajan Gupta said in an earnings call after q3 result.

    “In fact, we have the ability to charge Rs 30 more in case market forces allow us to charge and GTPL being high market share in many territories, they should have the ability to charge higher and we are happy about the consumer. I think consumers will have more choices,” he added.

    According to Gupta, DPOs with higher market share should be able to make many more relevant bouquets for consumers, for example, genre-level bouquet while currently bouquets are limited to five-six, which is more based on the ARPU slabs.  He said having very micro bouquets is also needed.  He stated that can happen with NTO 2.0 on the back of flexibility it offers for DPOs.

    Although he mentioned this is not a full assessment on NTO 2.0 but the MSO believes on the basis of the initial assessment that it should see a lot of stability in earnings and cash flow.

    “It is too early to speak about how the ARPU will happen in NTO 2.0. In NTO 1.0, if you see this quarter, our ARPU has stood at around Rs 118 and we are expecting that it will go up in q4. We have gone down by Re 1- Rs 1.5 because of the festive offer given by the broadcasters. We are expecting that in q4, it will go up as the festive offer is over. Right now, we have to wait to see what new bouquets, new channel prices come from the broadcasters in NTO 2.0 and only after the assessment, we can comment on NTO 2.0 ARPU,” GTPL Hathway  Cable TV business head and chief strategy officer Piyush Pankaj said.

    He also added that it is not certain right now if less money will be coming from customers because it depends on what type of bouquets and a-la-carte price the broadcasters will come through. But he said there is price stability in the market during the last one year and they believe price stability would continue.