ONEOTT Intertainment aims to take on Reliance Jio and Bharti Airtel by leveraging its extensive local partnerships.
The Hinduja Global Solution unit also plans to focus on affordable bundled plans.
It is targeting rural markets with TV, internet and OTT ecosystem to grow users.
How Hinduja’s ONEOTT Plans to Take On Jio and Airtel in Broadband Battle | Whole-Time Director Vynsley Fernandes Explains
"Large telcos compete on scale. We compete on being the strongest 'phygital' player, digital for online services and physical based on the partnerships/franchisees we have developed over 3 decades. Whilst digital continues to be the driver, the physical presence of our partners ensures reassurance, service and trust," he told Outlook Business in an interview
Vynsley Fernandes, Whole-Time Director at HGS and MD & CEO of ONEOTT Intertainment
Summary
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Hinduja Group's IT services and broadband unit, Hinduja Global Solutions (HGS), competes with both BPO giants like Genpact, WNS Ltd, and broadband service providers like Reliance Jio and Bharti Airtel. But the pressure from the latter has been ramping up as telecom giants try to bundle their high-speed fibre broadband, OTT apps, and digital TV services under a single subscription.
To compete with their scale, HGS' broadband arm ONEOTT Intertainment plans to rely on its local partnerships developed over three decades, along with upselling to its existing customers of media arm NXT Digital, says Vynsley Fernandes, Whole-Time Director at HGS and MD & CEO of ONEOTT Intertainment.
"Large telcos compete on scale. We compete on being the strongest 'phygital' player, digital for online services and physical based on the partnerships/franchisees we have developed over 3 decades. Whilst digital continues to be the driver, the physical presence of our partners ensures reassurance, service and trust," he told Outlook Business in an interview.
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Fernandes is betting on a simple, partnership-driven approach to grow. The company uses a wide network of about 15,000 local partners to reach customers, especially in smaller towns and rural areas. It offers affordable bundled plans (₹399–₹899) that combine TV, internet and OTT in one package. Instead of spending heavily on building infrastructure, it is expanding through partnerships, adding over 50,000 broadband users.
Internet and broadband services provider ONEOTT Intertainment Limited (OIL) became a subsidiary of Hinduja Global Solutions in 2022 as the group merged its media arm NXTDIGITAL with its IT services business.
Now, the company is also seeing penetration of its existing customer base as it tries to sell internet and OTT services to its millions of cable TV users. Fernandes explains that as people take a bundled subscription, which includes TV, broadband along with OTT, they tend to upgrade to faster internet plans and stick with the service longer.
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Here are the edited excerpts from the interview:
OneOTT operates at the intersection of broadband, OTT aggregation, and DTH. What is the long-term vision are you building a connectivity company, a content platform, or a bundled digital ecosystem?
As a Hinduja Group enterprise, we have always believed in building for the long term and OneOTT is a direct expression of that philosophy. Backed by HGS's technology DNA and the Hinduja Group's multi-decade track record of scaling businesses across sectors, we have been consciously building a converged digital ecosystem, riding on not just our technology and deploying infrastructure across digital television (DTV) and broadband (BB) but also leveraging the infrastructure of our 15,000 odd franchisees. The Group's financial strength and governance frameworks give us the confidence and capital to invest in infrastructure at a scale and pace that few independent players can match.
Put together, the digital ecosystem comprises a satellite delivery platform, a broadband platform and access to an estimated 200,000 kms of fiber connectivity across India.
Today, through our NXTDIGITAL and OneOTT segments, we already reach about 5 million households across over 4,500 PIN codes and operate broadband services in over 350 cities and towns across India. Significantly, 60% of our customers are from the fastest growing demographic of Tier-II, Tier-III and rural markets.
Our long-term vision is based on 3 integrated layers.
Connectivity layer: High-speed fiber broadband up to 1 Gbps, satellite internet and enterprise network solutions which we have rolled-out through our CelerityX business.
Content layer: Access to over 650 TV linear channels and a similar number on our IPTV service plus access to about 300,000 hours of OTT content across 25+ apps.
Digital services layer: Smart home Wi-Fi, VoIP, surveillance and building connectivity
Over the next 5 years, we aim to transition from “triple-play” to a “digital-life platform” powering entertainment, work-from-home, education and smart living on a single network.
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With players like Reliance Jio and Bharti Airtel aggressively bundling content with connectivity, what is your core differentiation pricing, content partnerships, service quality, or regional depth?
Large telcos compete on scale. We compete on being the strongest “phygital” player digital for online services and physical based on the partnerships/franchisees we have developed over 3 decades. Whilst digital continues to be the driver, the physical presence of our partners ensures reassurance, service and trust. Our differentiation comes from:
Regional depth and franchise-led distribution: Network of about 15,000 digital service partners gives us hyperlocal reach. Strong presence in Tier-2, Tier-3 & rural markets where “digital” is still evolving.
Flexible bundled pricing: Ability to analyze, assess and design micro-market strategies, products & plans (integrated product bundling of ₹399–₹899 which includes linear TV, broadband & access to OTT).
Asset-light expansion through strategic alliance partnerships: We are adding 50,000+ broadband subscribers through alliances to enable faster growth. Our strategy is not to outspend but to focus on optimizing what we do best leveraging partnerships for growing our business.
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How does your DTH platform NXTDIGITAL complement broadband offerings in practice? Are you seeing meaningful ARPU uplift or improved customer stickiness from bundling?
Our Headend-In-The-Sky (HITS) service and digital cable platform are strategic growth engines for broadband scale-up and monetization. NXTDIGITAL today reaches millions of video homes across 1,500+ cities and towns, especially in semi-urban & rural markets, giving us a ready distribution backbone to upsell broadband and OTT services.
Bundling is driving premiumization of the broadband base. If you look at our internal customer mix trends, the shift is very clear: Customers on 51–100 Mbps plans increased from about 31% to 38% YoY, 100–200 Mbps plans increased from about 6% to 9% and entry speed (10–30 Mbps) customers reduced from about 28% to 21%.
This demonstrates that video + broadband bundling is accelerating speed upgrades and premium plan adoption. In bundled homes, broadband ARPU is higher vs standalone connections while annual subscription conversion is significantly stronger by nearly 10%. This is because customers perceive greater value in a single bill, single service provider and seamless content access.
Rural and underserved markets are a focus area. What are the biggest structural challenges last-mile economics, affordability, or digital literacy and how are you addressing them differently from peers?
Rural digital inclusion is not just a business opportunity for us it is deeply aligned with the Hinduja Group's philosophy of building businesses that serve all of Bharat, not just urban India. Rural digital growth today faces 3 structural barriers:
Last-mile connectivity: Fiber capex per home can be 30–40% higher than urban clusters. Hence, we deploy a hybrid model unique to us viz. our HITS satellite + franchise fiber connectivity to reduce rollout cost. In our endevour to expand the reach of digital services to unserved and underserved areas, we have recently signed a MoU with the State Transformation Commission, Govt. of Uttar Pradesh for Project Ganga (Government Assisted Network for Growth and Advancement). This project is unique public-private partnership that enables last mile connectivity, not through not through a centralized corporate model, but by empowering youth to build and own the infrastructure themselves. For this, ONEOTT will develop, upskill and train 8 – 10 thousand local Digital Service Providers who in turn will connect 20 lakh homes and generate an employment of 1 lakh in Uttar Pradesh.
Affordability: This is an important focus area for success. Our entry broadband packs start at ₹299–₹399 making it affordable for users. We also leverage community Wi-Fi and village distribution models.
3Digital literacy: To help manage this challenge, we set up NXT Sangram, an ongoing curated training program a few years ago to train our franchisees (and potential partners) not just on new & emerging technologies, but also new sales techniques, product bundling etc.
This approach allows us to penetrate underserved markets faster than telco-led fiber models while contributing meaningfully to India's digital equity goals
On AI and analytics, can you share a concrete example where these technologies have tangibly improved network uptime, reduced churn, or enhanced customer experience?
We are embedding AI across network, customer lifecycle and monetisation, including predictive network analytics, churn propensity modelling, and smart plan recommendation engines.
AI is helping us move from reactive operations to predictive service delivery. An example is broadband connectivity in MTN or Mumbai-Thane-Navi Mumbai zone. Predictive Network Analytics has improved network uptime by over 50% – reducing turnaround times accordingly.
Fiberisation and capacity expansion require significant capital. How are you prioritising investments between upgrading legacy infrastructure and expanding into new geographies?
Our capital allocation follows a 60:40 principle: 60% toward fiberisation and capacity expansion in high-ARPU markets and 40% toward upgrading legacy cable to digital-fiber convergence.
Our key priorities include, Metro cluster densification (Mumbai, Delhi, Bangalore), tier-2 city fiber rings and rural satellite-fiber hybrid rollout.