India’s Airtel Digital TV is selling 20 percent of itself and intends to raise about $200 million in the process to fund expansion. The broadcaster is currently backed fully by telco giant Bharti. Now reports have emerged from Mumbai that US private equity investor Carlyle Group is in early talks to buy the stake.

However, Carlyle is far from alone and other names said to be interested include KKR and Bain Capital. As at December 31st Airtel DTH had some 7.9 million subscribers.

A recent Media Partners Asia report suggested that India’s DTH market would grow three-fold and revenues grow to $3.9 billion by 2017, and $5.3 billion by 2020. Today the complete India DTH market has about 33 million subscribers, and would grow to 76.6 million by 2020.

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Categories: Articles, Broadcast, Business, DTH/Satellite, M&A