Giving a clarion call to the Indian cable TV industry to grab the opportunities on offer, which are aplenty, despite challenges, Group CFO, JIO Platforms & Director of Reliance’s Cable Businesses Saurabh Sancheti Wednesday said the cable fraternity was “sitting on a gold mine”.

Delivering the Industry Keynote at SATCAB Symposium 2021, organized by the Aavishkar Media Group, speaking in chaste Hindi to ‘connect better’ with the delegates Sancheti also outlined the five Mantras for success — self-confidence, ability to adapt and change with times, always remembering the customer is the king and not shying away from using the power of technology to further business.

Pointing out that out of the 26 crore (260 million) households, 20 crore households have TV of which only 12 crore households have access to pay TV, Sancheti said, “If we (cable TV industry) are able to connect the remaining eight crore households, the growth can be between 40-50 percent.”

He added: “Hence, we are sitting on a gold mine. The question is: do we have the ability to convert these opportunities and overcome the challenges?”

The Mukesh Ambani-led Reliance Industries through group media companies has major business interests in some of the country’s leading MSOs like Hathway, GTPL Hathway and DEN Networks. Apart from the broadcast and cable distribution businesses, Reliance’s telco arm JIO Infocomm is also connecting homes through fibre optics and Jio GigaFibre aims to deliver a host of services to consumers, including TV and digital services.

Quoting from an episode in Ramayan where the real powers of monkey god Hanuman was revealed to him by one of the advisors of Lord Ram, Jamvant the bear, Sancheti prodded the cable fraternity to remember their capabilities and reminded it how millions of digital STBs were seeded in the market by the cable operators when the government mandated digitization of cable services few years back.

India is one the rare cases in the world where digitization of cable services was mandated by the government, unlike voluntary switchover from analog elsewhere.

The relationship that LCOs continue to have with millions of TV households is an asset, which should be exploited properly. The JIO executive urged the cable fraternity not to fritter away such relationships with consumers, as it is the time to strengthen that bond with the customers because it’s important to remember that customer is king— and would remain so.

Dwelling on the technology mantra that he had espoused at the beginning, Sancheti said that technology should be embraced, not shunned. Simply because the fast-changing tech can help spruce up the cable businesses by enabling better customer service and help in trimming costs too.

“I firmly believe that a golden future awaits us all and we must forget our differences to take on the challenges together,” Sancheti concluded.