“Dish TV has grown multi-fold as a brand over the last few years,” said R C Venkateish, chief executive officer, Dish TV. “We had reached the five million subscribers mark at the beginning of 2009 and within two years we have doubled our base in the country. We are proud to achieve our target for the current fiscal [year] of reaching 10 million subscribers and I would like to thank all our subscribers for putting their trust with Dish TV.

“Being the first DTH company in Asia to break the 10 million barrier, we now look forward to exit the current fiscal with a stronger subscriber addition and achieve our guided acquisition target while aiming [at] profitability in the months to come,” Mr Venkateish added.

Dish TV was the first DTH operator to market when it launched its pay-TV service across India in 2003. It is currently the largest player, in terms of subscriber numbers, in a highly competitive broadcast arena which now counts six private DTH operators in total. In addition to Dish, Indian viewers can also access DTH subscription-based services from Tata Sky, Sun Direct, Airtel Digital TV, Reliance Digital TV, and Videocon d2h. Together they broadcast to around 30 million viewers in India.