Airtel, Tata Group call off talks to merge DTH businesses

Bharti Airtel Ltd and Tata Group have called off talks for a potential merger of their direct-to-home (DTH) television businesses, the telecom major said in a regulatory filing on Saturday.

Airtel had first confirmed in February that they were engaged in preliminary, bilateral talks to explore combining Tata Group’s DTH business housed under Tata Play Ltd with Bharti Telemedia Ltd, a subsidiary of Airtel.

However, the company on Saturday informed the exchanges that the discussions failed to reach a satisfactory outcome.

“After not being able to find a satisfactory resolution, the parties have mutually decided to terminate the discussions,”it said in the filing.

On February 26, Sunil Mittal-led telecom services provider Bharti Airtel had said it was in talks with Tata Group for a merger of its loss-making direct-to-home (DTH) business.

"We wish to submit that Bharti Airtel and Tata Group are in bilateral discussions to explore a potential transaction to achieve a combination of Tata Group's DTH business housed under Tata Play Ltd, with Bharti Telemedia, a subsidiary of Airtel, in a structure acceptable to all parties," it had then stated.

The specific details were not shared at that point, but reports had suggested that the deal was likely to be a share-swap arrangement, with Airtel expected to hold a majority stake in the merged entity.

If completed, this would have been the second merger in the DTH sector after the Dish TV-Videocon d2h merger in 2016.

The potential merger was seen as a major consolidation move in India’s shrinking DTH sector, which is grappling with subscriber losses amid growing preference for digital streaming platforms. A merger would have brought together Tata Play’s estimated 19 million subscribers with Airtel Digital TV, boosting Airtel’s ‘triple play’ strategy of combining telecom, broadband and DTH services.

Tata Play, formerly Tata Sky, is India’s largest DTH operator and was initially launched as a joint venture between Tata Group and Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp. The Walt Disney Company later acquired Murdoch’s stake through its 2019 acquisition of 21st Century Fox.

With the talks now officially off, both companies are expected to continue operating their DTH businesses independently.