Aksh Optifibre to seek funding worth US$50-80mn for IPTV roll-out

August 22, 2008 - Aksh Optifibre, an Indian IPTV operator and optical fibre firm, aims to close funding worth US$50-80mn shortly to finance its IPTV roll-out in 20 cities across the country, according to the company's Managing Director Kailash Chaudhary.

In an interview with local news portal DNA, Mr. Chaudhary said that the company has raised US$40mn to roll out IPTV services in Mumbai and Delhi in collaboration with local telco MTNL, adding: "We have also tied up with BSNL to roll out IPTV in 20 cities. This requires an investment of $50-80mn over 12-18 months. We will close the modalities shortly… it would be a mix of debt and equity.” All 20 cities are expected to go live with the IPTV services over the next three months.

Mr. Chaudhary also welcomed yesterday's approval by the Union Cabinet of a policy framework for IPTV services in the country, under which IPTV operators can now require broadcasters to supply them with the same content provided to local cable and satellite services: “To date, pricing (by broadcasters) was arbitrary and IPTV was getting the wrong side of the stick. The broadcasters were neither considering us as CAS nor DTH and treated us like cable service providers, whereas we are completely different,” he said.

Aksh Optifibre expects that its IPTV subscriber base will increase from the current 10,00 to 500,000 over the next thee years, and also anticipates greater revenue opportunities from "pull advertising", which it has already started testing and expects to launch in two months' time.