Dubai:Sony Entertainment Television (SET) India, which runs a bouquet of television channels including Sony MAX, SET MAX, Sony PIX and AXN, is planning to launch six regional television channels in the next few years, a top official said.

“While our channels have been very popular country-wide, we have not really focused on the regional space in India,” said Rohit Gupta, President of Sony Entertainment Network. “We are currently focusing on the regional space to expand our market share.

Sony says it has been growing at 35 per cent year on year in the Indian television market — that generates $5 billion (Dh18.3 billion) worth of advertisement revenue every year. The industry is projected to grow at a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 15.5 and reach around $11.45 billion by 2014.

According to Pioneer Investcorp, the Indian cable industry is worth Rs270 billion ($4.89 billion) and is the third largest in the world after China and the United States.

Sony’s rivals in India — Star TV and Zee TV networks — have entered the regional markets such as Tamil, Telegu, Malayalam, Marathi, Punjabi and Bengali. All three are also trying to gain more viewership in the GCC. Zee has launched Zee Aflam, which runs popular Hindi movies dubbed in Arabic.

“In terms of consumers, South Asians comprise the single largest share of the population, but ad budgets to target them are much lower,” said Sumantra Dutta, country head of Star TV Middle East.

According to estimates, South Asians represent 67 per cent of the UAE population.

As per the Television Annual Measurement (TAM), India now has over 150 million households (out of 223 million) with television sets, of which over 103 million have access to Cable TV or Satellite TV, including 20 million households which are Direct-to-Home (DTH) subscribers. In Urban India, 85 per cent of all households have a TV and over 70 per cent of all households have access to satellite, cable or DTH services.

TV owning households have been growing at between 8-10 per cent.

PricewaterhouseCoopers believes TV revenues will rise from $5.7 billion to $11.4 billion from 2011–15. A recent report by Media Partners Asia (MPA) also predicted the Indian DTH market to overtake the United States next year, to become the world’s largest DTH market in volume terms, with an active subscriber base of close to 42 million.