ALTBalaji is looking to breakeven in 2020, said Nachiket Pantvaidya, Group Chief Operating Officer (COO), Balaji Telefilms.

"ALTBalaji is almost doubling and tripling the run rate of acquiring subscribers and looking to breakeven with eight million subscribers at the end of 36 months of the operation, that is about two years from now. Current number of subscribers stand at 2.5 million," he said.

The company is adding about 25,000-30,000 subscribers per day in ALTBalaji, he added.

Pantvaidya said there are three factors that led to the doubling of subscribers, "One is great internet momentum. Two, we were on two telecom partners, Reliance Jio and Airtel, in a big way in the last quarter and three, we have reconciled our programming strategy to make more mass content.”

The average revenue per user for ALTBalaji is at Rs 15 per user, he said, adding that they would be launching international service post June 15, which will take the average revenue per users (ARPU) to Rs 20-25.

With the strategic changes, the company expect to reduce the losses for FY19 to Rs 80 crore, said Pantvaidya, adding that the losses per month are also reducing to around Rs 7 from Rs 8-9 crore.

“Expect to be in the black on the consolidated level in two and half years,” he said.

Balaji Telefilms posted a weak set of earnings in the fourth quarter. The year-on-year (YoY) consolidated fourth quarter revenues were down 1% at Rs 93.7 crore against Rs 94.5 crore. Earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation, and amortisation (EBITDA) loss was Rs 19.3 crore versus profit of Rs 5.6 crore.

First Published:May 22, 2018 12:05 PM IST