21st Century Fox, led by Rupert Murdoch sees Star India as major growth driver

Star India, a wholly owned subsidiary of 21st Century Fox, is predicted to be next big growth driver for the brand.

Rupert Murdoch and Lachlan Murdoch, Executive Chairmen, 21st Century Fox in the annual report of 21st Century Fox for Financial Year 2015 (July–June) stated, “In India we believe Star will contribute greatly to our future growth. Over the last 12 months, Star expanded on its well-established leadership position in general entertainment, moving aggressively into the sports market with Star Sports, which is seeing exciting growth.”

It has been predicted that Star India will achieve an operating profit of $500 million by 2018 and $1 billion by end of 2020. Star India, the flagship channel is operating 51 channels in as different language as seven languages in over 100 countries across the world and reaching over 720 million every week.

So what is the driving force behind the growth of channel? One of the businesses that Star is positive about is the sports business. Regional expansion and greater presence of the network will definitely help in giving good numbers. Also, the investment worth $375 million for acquisition of the broadcast business of Maa TV Network Ltd which happened in February this year will help in accomplishing the same. Going by the figures, the market of Telugu Television is estimated to be around Rs 2,000 crore business, making it second in the list of revenue producing regional TV market in the country.

If we go by a recent FICCI-KPMG report, regional channels contributed 23.3 per cent viewership in 2014, and Telugu channels 24 per cent of this. To add to this, the company expects Star's Hotstar, which is a digital platform to gain huge impetus from digital presence thus leading to transformation of OTT Platform.

Star India’s has Star Plus, Life OK, Star Gold, Movies OK in Hindi channels and Star World, Star World Premier HD, FX, Star Movies, Star Movies Action on English front.  Bengali general entertainment channel include Star Jalsha and Marathi includes Star Pravah. It also has other regional channels like Asianet, Asianet Movies, Suvarna, Suvarna Plus and Vijay TV. It boasts of eight Star Sports channels too and ICC Cricket World Cup tournament telecasted on Star Sports channel earlier this year definitely grabbed the eyeballs of hundreds of millions of viewers thus giving it a title of India's largest television event ever.