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India may lose up to 1.95 lakh jobs as Pay TV households fall by 70 Million
The total number of TV sets in Indian households is expected to grow to 214 million by 2030, covering over 60% of the population.
Affordable consumer premise equipment (CPE) for Free TV is now available for under ₹1,000.
India’s television landscape is undergoing a dramatic transformation driven by rapid digital adoption, emerging consumption habits, and evolving distribution technologies such as D2M (Direct-to-Mobile) and 5G broadcasting. While the country continues to be one of the world’s largest content producers—churning out approximately 200,000 hours of content annually across multiple languages and cultures—its reliance on traditional Pay TV is dwindling.
The total number of TV sets in Indian households is expected to grow to 214 million by 2030, covering over 60% of the population. However, the share of Pay TV subscriptions within that number is shrinking rapidly. Projections indicate a further drop of 30 to 40 million Pay TV homes by 2030, reducing the total to just 71–81 million. This is a continuation of an ongoing decline; between 2018 and 2024, Pay TV households fell by 40 million. However, PayTV households continue to decline in India, potentially displacing Over 1.9 Lakh Jobs by 2030.
Several factors are contributing to this shift:
93% of TVs sold in 2024 are internet-capable, promoting a shift to Connected TV consumption.
Affordable consumer premise equipment (CPE) for Free TV is now available for under ₹1,000.
A rise in work-from-home and study-from-home trends is driving broadband adoption.
Higher-quality, personalized content on OTT platforms is luring audiences away from traditional channels.
Free content from platforms like YouTube, Samsung TV+, and JioTV+ is easily accessible on Smart TVs.
This transformation in consumption patterns is not without consequence. The fall in Pay TV subscriptions from 2018 to 2024 already led to the loss of 37,835 jobs in the Local Cable Operator (LCO) ecosystem, based on a sample survey of 28,181 respondents. Extrapolated to the total estimated 85,000 to 1.62 lakh LCOs in India, total job losses could range between 1.14 lakh and 1.95 lakh.
The projected decline of another 30 million Pay TV households by 2030 could worsen this employment crisis. Even if broadband and OTT platforms fill the entertainment gap, large ISPs and telecom companies may not generate enough new jobs to offset the losses due to their more centralized and automated operations, which depend less on local workforce networks like LCOs.
This looming shift suggests the industry must reimagine employment models in the content distribution ecosystem to adapt to the digital-first future.
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